The Debate That Never Rests

The intensity of debate between the two--online, in Mommy & Me groups, at the playground--is so charged that one wonders if anyone is really getting any sleep at all. Message-board moderators on sites like iVillage have had to restrain posters from attacking one another. My very own Baby Nazi (actually a British baby nurse named Gina Ford, author of The Contented Little Baby) is so reviled by some that one Amazon.com reviewer wrote, "Should be called Have a Convenient Baby"; another, "This book will ruin your life."

Within each school, confessions abound. Hard-core Attachmentites reveal they caved in to the pacifier (recently endorsed by the American Association of Pediatrics as a preventive for SIDS). Ferber followers beg one another's permission to pick up a weeping infant for just five minutes. Even Ferber admits, "Parents have always modified my program, and that's fine." Which makes me feel better about my own cheating (I added white noise and swaddled past the deadline). The truth is, even when parents stick with a program, most of them skip some rules and customize others. Standardized steps may sell books, but they don't make all babies sleep.

Sears concedes that parents, too, need some rest. And Ferber told me, "We've gained an enormous amount of knowledge from parents since I first published 20 years ago." As he put it, "The best way for us to learn about sleep is to listen very carefully to what parents describe happening in their own homes, and find out what really works and what doesn't." Could it be that the parenting gurus have cut us some slack? Finally the clouds of guilt are lifting. Maybe now we can get some sleep.