Why Johnny Can't Sleep
Time Magazine April 14, 1997
The notion that babies should spend the night apart from parents
is widely accepted. Trouble is, it makes no sense....
For our species, the natural nighttime arrangment is for kids
to sleep alongside their mothers for the first few years. At least,
that's the norm in hunter-gatherer societies, the closest thing
we have to a model of the social environment in which humans evolved.
Mothers typically nurse their children to sleep and then nurse
on demand throughout the night. Sounds taxing, but it's not. When
the baby cries, the mother starts nursing reflexively, often without
really waking up. (And the father, as I can personally attest,
never leaves Z-town.) ....
Why, exactly, is it bad to sleep with your kids? Learning to sleep
alone, says Ferber, lets your child "see himself as an independent
individual." I'm puzzled. It isn't obvious to me how a baby
would develop a robust sense of autonomy while confined to a small
cubicle with bars on the side and rendered powerless to influence
its environment. (Nor is it obvious these days, when many kids
spend 40 hours a week in day care, that they need extra autonomy
training.)