I want to add that sleep training is a hot-button issue among parents. There is some evidence that starting to sleep-train your baby too early can be traumatic. My advice is simply to gather evidence from different sources before making a choice.
Otherwise, I agree with Geoffrey Millers reply. Your working hours as a parent are usually shorter, but you learn how to set priorities and work more effectively.
It’s true that sleep training is quite controversial. If you look at Reddit parenting forums, it’s one of the most viciously debated topics.
There’s a strong taboo against explicitly training humans of any age using behaviorist reinforcement methods (which my wife Diana Fleischman is writing about in her forthcoming book). And there’s a naturalistic bias in favor of kids co-sleeping with parents, frequent night-time nursing, etc. -- some of which may have an evolutionary rationale, but some of which may be parents virtue-signaling their dedication, empathy, etc.
Maybe sleep training too early can be traumatic, but it’s not clear what ‘too early’ means, and I haven’t seen good data either way. I’m open to updating on this issue—with the caveat that a lot of parents throw around the term ‘traumatic’ in a rather alarmist way, without a very clear idea of what that actually means, or how it could be measured in a randomized controlled trial.
(There’s an analogy to dog training here—a lot of dog owners do very little training, very badly, on the view that training is manipulative, oppressive, and mean, and doesn’t allow their dogs to ‘be themselves’. Whereas owners of well-trained dogs understand that the short-term frustrations of training can have big long-term benefits.)
Regarding what prehistoric, hunter-gatherer, and traditional humans do in terms of parenting, it’s useful and fascinating to look at the book ‘Mothers and others’ (2011) by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
I want to add that sleep training is a hot-button issue among parents. There is some evidence that starting to sleep-train your baby too early can be traumatic. My advice is simply to gather evidence from different sources before making a choice.
Otherwise, I agree with Geoffrey Millers reply. Your working hours as a parent are usually shorter, but you learn how to set priorities and work more effectively.
Frank—thanks for your reply.
It’s true that sleep training is quite controversial. If you look at Reddit parenting forums, it’s one of the most viciously debated topics.
There’s a strong taboo against explicitly training humans of any age using behaviorist reinforcement methods (which my wife Diana Fleischman is writing about in her forthcoming book). And there’s a naturalistic bias in favor of kids co-sleeping with parents, frequent night-time nursing, etc. -- some of which may have an evolutionary rationale, but some of which may be parents virtue-signaling their dedication, empathy, etc.
Maybe sleep training too early can be traumatic, but it’s not clear what ‘too early’ means, and I haven’t seen good data either way. I’m open to updating on this issue—with the caveat that a lot of parents throw around the term ‘traumatic’ in a rather alarmist way, without a very clear idea of what that actually means, or how it could be measured in a randomized controlled trial.
(There’s an analogy to dog training here—a lot of dog owners do very little training, very badly, on the view that training is manipulative, oppressive, and mean, and doesn’t allow their dogs to ‘be themselves’. Whereas owners of well-trained dogs understand that the short-term frustrations of training can have big long-term benefits.)
Regarding what prehistoric, hunter-gatherer, and traditional humans do in terms of parenting, it’s useful and fascinating to look at the book ‘Mothers and others’ (2011) by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.