Tag: love

  • Review: Cribsheet

    Review: Cribsheet

    A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool

    Cribsheets Book Cover

    Author: Emily Oster

    I’m spending the bulk of 2024 pregnant. As a result, I am now knee-deep in pregnancy and child-rearing books.

    I bought this book because it promised to be a fact-based approach to parenting, that I thought my computer nerd husband would appreciate. I was disappointed. Oster is clearly cherry-picking research to support how she chooses to raise her own kids. I’m sure she’s a fine mother, I was just hoping for a more unbiased approach.

    Early in the book, Oster shares how she struggled with breastfeeding, So when she insisted that there is no benefit to breastfeeding I was floored. What?! excuse me WHAT?!

    I’m not interested in “Mom Shaming” but I believe in being honest with ourselves. Breastmilk has been shown to contain antibodies (Johnson-Hence) and doctors have been encouraging mothers to breastfeed since the Middle Ages (Stevens) I’ve been doing lots of my own research about infant health, and I agree with what author Andrea Freeman had to say about this issue in her book Skimmed: formula is fast food for babies. It is food, and at the end of the day that’s what is important, feeding your kids fast food is not neglect or abuse, but it’s not ideal. There are health issues women can have that make breastfeeding a non-option, and I’m not interested in shaming anyone, but formula is not the same as breastmilk.

    Oster even goes so far as to disregard attachment theory, pointing out that it has never been scientifically proven. That made me mad. Attachment theory (Fraley) is a scientific theory about how babies bond with their caregivers in correlation to the care they receive. Basically, it boils down to this: If parents don’t emotionally bond with their kids, the kids will struggle to form emotional bonds later in life. It’s not the kind of thing you CAN scientifically prove.

    It’s not exactly ethical to ask people to be bad parents to definitively prove your child-rearing theories. Helmut Kentler actually did that, and he should have been shot! (Aviv)

    I will be turning to other resources for parenting advice thank you.

    Sources:

    Aviv, Rachel. “The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles.” The New Yorker, 19 July 2021, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles.

    Fraley, Chris. “A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research: R. Chris Fraley.” A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research | R. Chris Fraley, 2018, labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm.

    Johnson-Hence, Chelseá B., et al. “Stability and Heterogeneity in the Antimicrobiota Reactivity of Human Milk-Derived Immunoglobulin a.” Journal of Experimental Medicine, The Rockefeller University Press, 7 Aug. 2023, rupress.org/jem/article/220/8/e20220839/214243/Stability-and-heterogeneity-in-the-antimicrobiota.

    Stevens, Emily E, et al. “A History of Infant Feeding.” The Journal of Perinatal Education, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2009, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684040/.