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COPYRIGHT 2002 Mothering Magazine
For more than ten years, I have been helping expectant families prepare for birth and early parenting. During this period I have become accustomed to hearing strong and conflicting positions on many topics, including epidural anesthesia, circumcision, and the best age for weaning. But no subject has been more challenging than that of bedsharing.
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Biologic Model versus Cultural Message
Nighttime solitary infant sleep is not practiced in traditional societies, and even during daylight hours it is the exception. Babies are kept near their mothers. Shared nighttime sleep may take the form of bedsharing (actually sharing the same sleep surface) or cosleeping (when the baby is within arm's reach of its mother, but not on the same sleep surface).
According to Katherine Dettwyler, adjunct professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, "Many people in the United States assume that non-Western cultures cosleep or bedshare because limited resources prevent them from creating separate sleep areas for their children. This is simply not true. Mothers in non-Western cultures traditionally sleep with their children to monitor them and keep them safe, to facilitate breastfeeding, and simply to be near them." (1) If shared sleep is the behavioral template from earliest human history, why, of late, are some voices seeking to erode its legitimacy?
The American cultural values of independence and control explain a great deal of the societal encouragement of parent-infant separation and the priority placed on parental convenience. (Think of the many products designed to spell parents from their children during daylight hours, such as the swing, infant seat, playpen, jumper, activity center, and walker.) Since bedsharing literally embodies maternal-infant interaction in order to meet a child's nighttime needs, it may appear both out of sync and just plain unattractive.
These overarching cultural messages have long been apparent. What is less clear is the percentage of US infants who have slept in cribs versus adult beds versus a bit of both. Breastfeeding rates decreased dramatically after World War II, and the primary motivation for keeping one's baby nearby at night was considerably diminished.
Solitary sleep for babies gradually became normal; eventually, for many parents, it seemed preferable. Distance between baby and mother was deemed good, even healthy. "Sleep" had come to mean "sex," and concerns that bedsharing might threaten marital intimacy took on a priority greater than the traditional wisdom of being close to one's baby in the night. Somewhere along the line, fear of attaching too deeply to one's child also became a preoccupying, if subconscious, message. Threaded throughout these elements was the long-held fear that babies who shared a bed with their parents might become victims of suffocation through overlying.
But as breastfeeding rates in America began climbing again, reaching nearly 62 percent in 1982, the pragmatic value of bedsharing was revived. (2)
The Government Weighs In
In September 1999, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recommended against placing children under two years of age in an adult bed, based on its analysis of information on the deaths of children under the age of two for the years 1990 to 1997. (3,4) The CPSC warned that using an adult bed as a young child's sleep environment put the child at risk for overlying, strangulation, and suffocation. Young children, the agency advised, should be put only in safety-approved cribs.
Numerous critics (among them pediatricians, anthropologists, and at least one key individual within the agency) quickly pointed out the many shortcomings of the study on which the CPSC recommendation was based:
Inability to Apply Findings and Compare Risks: The study did not allow for statistical inferences because its admittedly anecdotal data did not control for demographic variables such as race, ethnicity, age, family unit structure, and social/economic status. Without such controls, a study cannot define who is at risk. Its conclusions can describe and analyze patterns of injury and death within the population comprising the database,...
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