So it's happening again. Misguided government officials in Middletown, PA are concluding that, because a mom rolled over on her baby and suffocated the baby, when the mom was high (alcohol and marijuana), that no moms should sleep with their babies.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mother-charged-involuntary-manslaughter-accidentally-220454550.html
I saw something similar in New York City back in 2015, which I blogged about then.
http://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2015/05/nyc-public-health-campaign-to-stop-moms.html
If a mom kills her kids when driving drunk, should we conclude that no moms should ever drive their kids? NO!
Similarly, if a mom kills her kid in bed, when high that doesn't mean that no moms should sleep with their kids? No.
I am a fervent believer in the family bed. The family bed facilitates breast feeding, which dramatically improves the health of moms and babies both. The family bed reduces or eliminates SIDS, probably because proximity to mom helps babies synchronize their breathing.
I once read an article about a family in the jungle in Indonesia. They lived in a rude hut in primitive conditions. They slept on the floor with the baby between them. They woke up one night, hearing the baby crying and found the baby's arm down the gullet of a brown snake.
They were able to save the baby because they were right there at the time.
This is the kind of environment we evolved in -- on rife with predators. Children instinctively need to sleep with their parents at night, because sleeping alone in the wild is dangerous. Children instinctively fear monsters at night, because of ancestral memories of living where there were in fact monsters who ate children everywhere.
Given children's instinctive fear of monsters and sleeping alone, it is cruel and inhuman to make them sleep alone.
Let's not punish all moms and children because this one was drinking and using marijuana.
Also, please read Dr. William Sears' Book
Nighttime Parenting for more information.
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