Part of this is that Americans have an obsession with babies sleeping in another room and in another bed.
My family immigrated here and no one ever did that. Children sleep with their parents.
My family immigrated here and no one ever did that. Children sleep with their parents.
Edit: And is it an "obsession" or simply a cultural difference?
It's easier for the family when the child is in the room with the parents. At least in the same way it is easier to have a master bathroom rather than one on the other side of the house.
> is it an "obsession" or simply a cultural difference?
It was an imposed cultural difference. American parents were told they would hurt their children if they slept in the same room with them, or attended to them too quickly when they cried. So they changed their behavior in order to conform.
Additionally, it’s much harder for the parents or kids to get consistent sleep (often already causing a lot of difficulties during this time), when toddler age kids are in the same area, due to differing schedules.
In the US, due to mainly socio-economic issues (need to migrate for work often results in families separated over long distances), it is relatively uncommon to have relatives living in the same household able to help with childcare too, especially late at night. So it puts a lot more load on the parents.
If not managed effectively, this can break the parents in ways no one likes to talk about in polite company.
I wish doctors would give parents this advice because what happens now is that many American parents will cosleep without admitting it and don't know what to do when they engage in it.
In many traditional cultures, the baby is breastfed all night and the bed is stripped and beds are on the floor. If you do these , sids risk is greatly diminished. Some of the cosleep studies on sids are flawed. They conflate taking a baby onto a couch to sleep with an exhausted mother the same as a breastfeeding mother falling asleep with her child on a flat surface. But Americans are obsessed with cribs so doctors don't give any advice and conflate two unlike things.
https://cosleeping.nd.edu/safe-co-sleeping-guidelines/
https://news.nd.edu/news/infant-co-sleeping-expert-sheds-lig...
Apparently, “nearly zero” are mathematically literate, too.
73.6% of American Adults over 20 years old are overweight. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-adult-17-18/obe...
26.4% of the American population is not overweight. I didn't correlate to eating disorders resulting in people being under weight - I've seen a decent amount of that too. Probably 5 to maybe even 10%.
I'm struggling to see how that isn't a pretty select cohort that is a healthy weight, no?
Anecdotally, most Americans consider me lean and athletic - I'm a good 20 lbs overweight by reasonable historic standards, but not obese. The overton window has shifted a lot, but our bodies and what is healthy for us are no different.
No, its not. Even morbidly obese doesn’t mean that, though it statistically correlates with a greater reduction in expected lifespan.
> 73.6% of American Adults over 20 years old are overweight. [...] I didn't correlate to eating disorders resulting in people being under weight - I've seen a decent amount of that too. Probably 5 to maybe even 10%.
1.6% of adults over 20, actually, using 2018 numbers. [0]
At any rate, even if it was your 5-10%, not enough to make the “at a healthy weight” number close to 0 (even if underweight was relevant in context of being more likely to suffocate an infant, which I would hazard a guess it is not.)
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/underweight-adult-17-18...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.20023
Though I wasn’t claiming its relevance, rather replying to the prior posters apparent assertion that their suggested course of action was widely applicable (when they said it was for folks of healthy weight).
Which if it requires a healthy weight, definitely means it’s not widely applicable right now.
I’ll see myself out…
Source: new baby last month.
Made a huge difference, since our baby didn't sleep for more than 1 hour without a human body until she was age 2. Now if she's tired, she naturally fall asleep.
Source?
This is also a weird presumption: go to bed when the kids go to sleep and wake up early. You get the same amount of sleep and a free morning.
> SIDS: A disorder marked by the sudden and unexpected death of a healthy child who is younger than one year old, usually during sleep. The cause of sudden infant death syndrome is not known. Also called crib death and SIDS
As SIDS is better understood, and categorization is changing (addressed in the paper I linked elsewhere) the graph showing proportions of accidental suffocation/strangulation during sleep is rising while SIDS is dropping - but both numbers are adding up to about the same. (see total SUID death rate, Figure 1)
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/1/e20220...
It's saying some proportion is, but it's unknown (and likely unknowable) what the actual proportion really is, for a multitude of reasons. It's unlikely to be most.
There are a lot of similar issues with mortality data in general, but kids are a particularly sensitive topic. For instamce, a large portion of 'gun cleaning accidents' are suicides. How many has changed with the times and the fashions. It's possible to guesstimate approximately of course, but we'll never really know for sure unless we somehow plunked an invisible researcher over the shoulder of every person all day every day.
And yes, I suspected it was hard to get proper data
Up to a point, sure. One common scenario is for newborns to sleep in their own crib/basinet/whathaveyou in the parent's room for a short time, before moving into their own room. Many people don't sleep train until their children are at least six months, if not much older. Other parents will keep them in their beds.
I have two children under the age of three and, anecdotally, where and how parents decide to have their children sleep is really all over the board because it boils down to what works best for the family.
And I think it's really stupid, unfair and short-sighted to judge other parents for their decisions in this area.
I would expand this to [in any area]. We need to adopt more of a “whatever works for the family” attitude rather than a one size fits all attitude.
I understand the argument to be that it doesn't work well for the baby. That they experience a form of abandonment because their brains are wired to equate abandonment with the absence of close contact. They're very dependent on the proximity of a caregiver.
Unfortunately, being given no information, the American parents who cosleep go on blind and don't know what precautions to take.
But yeah, it's an obsession because it's pushed despite the fact the arrangement is incredibly uncommon worldwide.
As for the last question.... I don't care. In fact I ask the same thing when people act as if co sleeping is some great evil
I got a solid 3-4 hours a night. The babies got fed, cleaned, cuddled etc. Win-win.
This is a feature, not a bug. That attunement is what allows caregivers to avoid suffocating their child. It works when the caregiver is not under the influence or so exhausted they don’t wake up (which it sounds like in your case you were on the verge of that by only sleeping an hour or less, but I promise you after a week or so you adjust and sleep fine if not more a bit less deeply so you will react if anything is happening to the baby.
I'm so tired of the condescending tone that is usually taken for granted when talking about traditional American culture. Can we please stop this? It's just a cultural difference.
After we co-slept for 3 years with our baby, on the second one they wanted to take the baby off my wife the night in the hospital (baby sleeps on mom's chest). I understand the concern, but this is the second baby, we know the drill.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
I am an American, and my family's pediatrician gave cosleeping advice when asked, despite discouraging it. I'll reiterate GP's point: labeling a cultural difference as a national "obsession" is unwarranted.
This is not a traditional American cultural value. Traditionally, Americans sleep with their kids. In fact, large portions still do. Putting children in a crib was turned into an American cultural value by various associations, not by some cultural development.
“America” is a big country, with many world cultures in it.
anyway, the non Western world is obsessed with full time childcare being compulsory for women. Why are you even talking about this?