Crying it Out: The Impact on Infants
Since the dawn of time humans have been caring for and raising children, seeking out the best way to nurture and provide for them. But in recent times what constitutes the "best way" has been fraught with controversy. Up until about 150-200 years ago in cultures all over the world, most families shared one sleeping room and frequently one bed. This was the only way to provide protection and nurturing for the infants. But as people became wealthier and were able to have homes with more rooms they began separating the parents from the children. Even then children generally slept together and nursing infants continued to share their parents' bed. It was a rare family who were able to afford enough space to separate each member of the family. Even today in most non European/American cultures the family bed is the norm rather than the exception. In the United States beginning about 100 years ago families started begin told co-sleeping would lead to sexual abuse, suffocating infants, fostering an unhealthy dependence on parents and spoiling the infant. It is unclear why people would develop such beliefs considering this was normal for thousands of years and is still the norm in most other cultures and even in many families in the United States.
About 150 years ago the Nestle Corporation began marketing a formula based on cow's milk aimed at replacing breast feeding. In short order the propaganda was convincing mothers that breast feeding was "primitive" and animalistic. Women in the scientific, modern world were "above" turning themselves into "cows" to nurse their infants. And so women, freed from the "chore" of nursing their infant felt freer to place the infant in a crib in another room, away from the parents. This gave rise to one of the most fundamental controversies in recent child raising history, how to handle infant night crying and sleeping through the night. Over the past 50 years or so hundreds of experts of various sorts have wadded in on the issue. The most prevalent school of thought in the 1950's and earlier was to avoid picking up an infant when it cried or "giving in" to its demands for attention because this would spoil the child and thwart their maturity process. Experts in the field, mostly male, who decided women who had been successfully raising children since the origins of our species no longer knew how to do their job, began promoting the idea a child must learn to comfort herself and teach herself to go to sleep without the help of a parent.
This advice demanded when it is time for an infant to go to sleep the parent should not nurse, feed or rock the baby to sleep but should put him to bed fully awake and then allow it to fall asleep without interference from the parent. If the baby begins to cry the parent should go in to check and make sure everything is ok but after that should not respond to the crying for at least 10 minutes and then should not do anything to comfort the still crying infant but only make sure he is still safe. After a while the infant will stop crying and go to sleep or will cry herself to sleep. Continue this pattern for several nights and soon the baby will go to sleep and stay asleep without interfering with the parent's evening and night. Although for most parents crying elicits an impulse to go to the infant providing comfort and nurture, after years of hearing from experts parents have stopped trusting their instincts and began believing they might irreparable harm their child if they respond to their crying at night. Frantic parents have been assured allowing their infants to "cry it out" at night is the only alternative to having spoiled, insecure and demanding children who are incapable of comforting themselves and growing into independent and mature individuals. They have been convinced it does no harm to the infant to be left alone in their crib, by themselves without their parent to give them comfort and is, in fact a necessary part of growing up. And so generations of children are being left to cry it out and learn to "comfort" themselves sans the safety and security of parents.
But is it really necessary to do this to get infants to sleep through the night, to grow into confident and well adjusted children, to learn to comfort themselves and become independent? Does this process really leave no lasting mark on the child so they are none the worse for the ordeal? Here is where opinions become polarized and parents wanting to do the best thing for their infants are caught in the middle of some very strong opinions.
On the side of the "cry it out" philosophy are a number of well known "authorities" who have written volumes on the subject. These people devised elaborate plans designed to encourage a parent to allow their infant to cry for increasing lengths of time. They are instructed to never pick up the child, talk, sing or otherwise try to comfort the crying infant but simply check on it and leave the room. This is allowed to go on for hours if necessary. Although these and other experts on the subject have spent years convincing parents their methods do not harm the child and in fact help parents through a necessary process, there is very little, if any, accurate and scientifically supported research on their claims. However, according to child development experts from a number of fields, "parents who put their children in a crib down the hall and expect them to stay there quietly until morning may be risking their child's emotional health. A child who does not receive warmth and reassurance when she asks for it can develop a range of attachment and trust disorders." (Dettwyler electronic article) Recently Harvard University confirmed these other scientists' and experts' opinions through detailed research releasing a study on this very subject. They examine the impact of allowing an infant to cry it out on the long term development of a baby. Their findings are very different than what parents have been lead to believe. In 2007 researchers at Harvard discovered infants who were left to cry it out for extended periods of time showed all the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. This research examines the impact of early separation of infants from their mothers by placing them in a separate room and then allowing them to cry themselves to sleep. "The effects of early separation cause changes in infant brains that makes future adults more susceptible to stress in their lives...Parents should recognize having their babies cry unnecessarily harms the baby permanently. It changes the nervous system so they're sensitive to future trauma and panic disorders." (Commons, Harvard Research article electronic version)
This research offers proof against the claims of advocates of the cry it out school that consistent response to their infants and co-sleeping does not lead to sexual abuse, over dependence or other psychological harm. There are less cases of abuse amongst families who practice this type of attachment parenting, children do not seem to go through bedtime anxiety or nightmare; they develop self esteem and security because their early needs for parental security are met and they become more independent as they grow older. (Flint Infant Security Scale Research)Further research shows a huge portion of brain development in infants occurs during their sleeping hours and their natural waking and sleeping rhythm allows for the ideal development of waking cognitive skills. When a child is force to cry these natural rhythms are interrupted. The infant begins engaging in deeper, stress induced sleep earlier in life with less time spent in the brain developing REM sleep. This slows down their cognitive development and can cause a lasting decease in their overall intelligence later in life. Additional research conducted on animals has shown although animals will adapt their behavior and cease crying out, their stress hormones such as Cortisol and physiological stimuli remain high.
Other scientists have been examining this phenomenon of forcing infants to sleep alone and endure extended periods of crying in order to become independent and self sufficient. In a winter, 1996 article in Mothering Magazine, James J. McKenna, Ph.D., an anthropologist and internationally-known expert on infant sleep summarizes his views on the anthropological relevance of family sleep sharing, noting that "...nighttime parent-infant co-sleeping during at least the first year of life is the universal, species-wide normative context for infant sleep, to which both parents and infants are biologically and psychosocially adapted...Solitary infant sleep is an exceedingly recent, novel and alien experience for the human infant." (McKenna, Mothering Magazine) Katherine Dettwyler, Ph.D., an award-winning anthropologist and co-editor of Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives agrees with McKenna, claiming American attitudes about how and where a baby sleeps are unique. "Mothers who are co-sleeping still make up the majority of the world's parents. In other societies, it isn't viewed as expected or normal for a baby to sleep by himself."
Although the controversy continues, this in one area parents would do well to carefully look behind the claims of the popular parenting advice and into the reality of their claims that unresponsiveness to infant crying does no harm. What message is an infant receiving when its caretakers end up ignoring its only means of communication? What impact does it have on their ability to trust in their communication skills, their safety in the world, their security and the bond they have for someone who chooses not to attend their needs? Maybe next time people are lamenting the increasing of younger children becoming violent, angry and unattached and how adults are failing to form deep and lasting relationships we might consider how being abandoned as infants really is affecting people.
Resources
http://bottle-feeding-baby.com/the-history-of-formula-milk.php
http://www.fresnofamily.com/ap/familybed.htm
www.talaris.org/pdf/research/CIOPoster.pdf
Commons, Michael Dr. (2007). Harvard Gazette, Harvard University
Dettwyler, Katherine (1998). Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives New York: Aldine Transaction
Gordon, McCall and Hill, Sheri (2005). Flint Infant Security Scale Research Antioch University Center on Infant Mental Health and Development
McKenna, James J. (1996). Mothering Magazine Electronic Version
Sears, William, (1999). Nighttime Parenting, New York: Plume
