one prhase to end unsolicited parenting advice

Looking for a way to shut down that unsolicited and bad, parenting advice?
​Read on. 

Remember Jerry McGuire? “Show me the money!!”


The next time someone questions your parenting choices, or gives you unsolicited advice, I want you to try something. 


Channel your inner Jerry, look them dead in the eye and say “show me the evidence”.


Then you might want to clarify what evidence means. 


It does not mean cultural beliefs, old wives tales, or a friend of a friends’ cousin had it happen. It doesn’t even mean “in my own practice I see”, “If you were my wife/it were my baby I would” “it’s hospital policy to” or “research (that I commissioned/ that was funded by Nestle) shows”


Real evidence meets at least one of the following criteria:

• Decades worth of peer-reviewed literature from multiple countries that is either truly longitudinal (hint: measuring outcomes of sleep training at age 1 is not longitudinal) or has hard proof to back it up. (eg. brain scans)
• Stands up cross culturally. Cross cultural is not Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Britain. That is research done on WEIRD countries (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic). Cross culturally means that the same outcomes or behaviours can be seen in cultures all over the world - Asia, Africa, Europe.
• Has no financial conflicts of interest
• Takes biological norms into consideration.

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Some examples of good research

​Smacking: 50 years worth of research including brain scans showing the differences in brain growth between children who were smacked and those who were not, as well as multiple European countries that have banned smacking decades ago with no rise in crime rates etc.


Bed sharing: Leading experts from renowned Universities in 3 countries (albeit all WEIRD countries) with thousands of hours of clinical observations including heart rate monitoring, sleep phase monitoring, and video showing that bed sharing can be done safely, and that mother-baby dyads synchronize their sleep-wake cycles. Backed up by anthropological data proving bedsharing to be the biological norm for 99% of human history, and still the norm in over 60% of the world. Also supported by parent questionnaire research which shows that approximately 50% of US parents have bedshare at least on occasion.
Conversely the data on bedsharing deaths is not consistent as every county and country record deaths differently, and very little of the research looking at death rates separates out safe practice from unsafe practice, eg. couch sharing.
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some examples of bad advice
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Sleep Training : Doctor turned authors who have used their own clinical practice and commissioned research to prove that it is possible to get a baby to “sleep” through the night at only days old, and use that finding to convince patients and readers that a newborn should sleep through the night.

Any study that relies on parental reporting to determine if the baby slept better or longer. 
Any study that is not (truly) longitudinal (at least 10 years)
Any study that has no objective measures of the impact on baby (brain scans, cortisol samples, analysis of pitch and length of cry etc.) 


Sleep deprivation: Most studies look at adults, and simply extrapolate their theories/ findings down to babies. This is a problem because babies do not sleep the same way adults do. They have shorter sleep cycles. The claims that (either adults or babies) we need to be getting x number of hours sleep per night are only ever averages, every individual is different and whilst some will thrive on 2 hours less than the recommendation, others will need 2 hours more.

The western obsession with children sleeping through the night and uninterrupted adult sleep does not take into account biological norms. For 99% of human history adults did not sleep in one long uninterrupted block at night. This still holds true in many societies around the world, but those with electricity and those without. Children including babies have no bedtime in dozens of countries around the world. In tribal cultures where it is still the norm for the tribe to sleep communally around the fire, someone can tell a joke in the middle of the night, and the tribe will laugh, before falling straight back to sleep. The world was explored and conquered by sailors and soldiers on watch, and even in the west we have many occupations (including literal brain surgery) that demand the employees work shifts. Sure 8 hours uninterrupted sleep is nice, but it is not the biological norm.


Any Topic: Decades worth of parenting manuals

You can pretty much guarantee that if the phrase “bad habit” is used there is no actual research to back up the claims. Same if the phrases “in my day” or “I would never have gotten away with” are used.

So next time you Paediatrician, Child Health nurse, Best friend, Mother in law, Sister or some random lady at the supermarket decide to tear shreds off you for daring to parent differently to them, instead of letting it eat away at your confidence, think WWJD? What. Would. Jerry. Do? And demand that they show you the evidence.