Bringing up baby… without even looking

A pregnant friend, back home in England has just texted me to say she is watching a programme, on Channel 4, that compares childcare methods. It’s called Bringing up Baby. One woman, not a mother herself, receives £1000 a day in exchange for helping parents with their new-born babies. She advocates no eye contact and four-hourly feeds only. She believes that one-day old babies are trying to manipulate their parents. So she advises mothers and fathers to be strong and not to give in to their baby’s cries. At one point the couple are sitting on the sofa while their hours-old baby screams in a cot next door. The parents are trying to enjoy a glass of wine "as it should be". Except that they are crying too. It is the saddest thing I have heard in weeks.

Perhaps it is because I am living in a country where thousands of children are receiving this same treatment in orphanages, or perhaps it is because I have a tiny baby of my own right now, but I cannot get this out of my head. Every time I look at her (in our bed at night where she sleeps, or during one of the 10 or so feeds she currently gets in 24 hours), I think of the baby who came out of the womb and straight onto an experimental TV programme, to be subjected to entirely unnatural and cruel parental neglect. Treating a child in this way is tantamount to abuse. They may as well be in an orphanage. It would be cheaper too.

I also feel for the parents – one day they will surely regret the choice they have made. Maybe tomorrow, if they decided to read up on the wealth of scientific evidence that shows how damaging this ‘parenting’ method actually is. Research, easily and clearly explained in Sue Gerdhart’s Why Love Matters; Margot Sunderland’s The Science of Parenting, and others, shows how the stress of prolonged abandonment can cause babies to suffer permanent damage to the brain cells. Neglecting to meet a baby’s emotional needs (e.g. eye contact and constant touch), and physiological needs (e.g. feeding and sleeping on demand), causes distress and trauma. This results in emotional and behavioural disorders, such as stress, lack of confidence, depression, addiction and anorexia, in both childhood and adult life. Given all this, and bearing in mind that half of Britain lives in fear of a whole generation of dysfunctional teenagers, I question why this sort of TV is allowed and whether this kind of advice should be sanctioned.

The thing that worries me the most, is that, if this baby does start to fall asleep on its own and sleep through the night, people will mistake this for a happy child responding to successful parenting (though given that they're only filming until 3 months we'll never really know anyway). The reality, however, is that babies who are deprived of love and whose needs are ignored, often become compliant and submissive. What’s the point of expressing their needs if no one is listening?

I find myself almost hoping that this child will respond in another way, also common. Children who never learn to express their needs appropriately can be unreasonably demanding and have frequent tantrums. This might put viewers off. Then again, tantrums, if not handled correctly (give lots of love and holding to help the child deal with their overwhelming emotions), can cause further trauma. So I must not wish for this either, as the poor child is even less likely to ever receive the small thing it is asking for: that its parents actively love him. So my last hope is with the other mentors on the programme, who advocate attachment and child-led parenting. Though I can’t help feeling that they are likely to be portrayed as fluffy hippies who breastfeed their school-age children. It all makes good TV right?