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People Are Still Talking about Not Spoiling the Baby — Really?
You cannot spoil a baby
Seventy-five years after Dr. Spock wrote The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care and single-handedly overturned a century of Victorian strictures on motherhood, some well-meaning but misguided souls are still advising young mothers to be cruel to their babies.
Baby is hungry? The schedule says it’s not time to eat yet; baby should be asleep now. So, ignore those cries. With any luck, by the time three hours have gone by since the last meal, baby will have exhausted herself in tears, will fall asleep in the middle of her meal and not wake up until … oh, but the schedule says it’s not time to eat yet.
People who talk about spoiled babies seem to be locked into the previous century. Beginning in the late 1800s up until Dr. Spock wrote the seminal book on child-rearing, a mother was told that feeding her baby whenever she is hungry would be bad for baby’s health and that responding to her baby’s cries would teach baby to cry when she wanted something. Babies were supposed to cry in their cribs, alone, because that way they would learn independence and self-reliance. Parents were even told not to touch their children unnecessarily (whatever that means) and to kiss them only on their foreheads.
