midnightpride

Abstract (Document Summary)
The notion that babies should spend the night apart from their parents is widely accepted, but it makes no sense.
The natural nighttime arrangement is for children to sleep alongside their mothers for the first few years.

EVERY NIGHT THOUSANDS OF PARENTS, following standard child-care advice, engage in a bloodcurdling
ritual. They put their several-months-old infant in a crib, leave the room, and studiously ignore its crying. The crying
may go on for 20 or 30 minutes before a parent is allowed to return. The baby may then be patted but not picked
up, and the parent must quickly leave, after which the crying typically resumes. Eventually sleep comes, but the
ritual recurs when the child awakes during the night.
The same thing happens the next night, except that the parent must wait five minutes longer before the designated
patting. This goes on for a week, two weeks, maybe even a month. If all goes well, the day finally arrives when the
child can fall asleep without fuss and go the whole night without being fed. For Mommy and Daddy, it's Miller time.