Reply to The most annoying/ridiculous things about raising a baby/toddler in 2024?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is a very strong emphasis on safe sleep and car seats -- e.g. people being afraid to front face before 4, not being ok with baby sleeping even in strollers or swings.
I've seen pushback on some of these from non-American moms in international online moms' forums. [/quote]

Yes, one of the better things that happened to me when my baby was still an infant is that I became friends with a mom through a mom's group who was Czech. She also had an older kid. At group, people would wring their hands about everything, especially regarding safe sleep. I went out for coffee with her after group one day and she was like, "just so you know, I co-sleep with my baby and did with my older kid too and it's totally fine and is what most people do in the rest of the world." She didn't feel comfortable saying it in group because people were really intense about it and had said several negative things about the dangers of co-sleeping. And not only do people freak out about the safety issues (which, as my friend explained, you can basically mitigate with safe sleep practices including not drinking and getting rid of excess bed clothes) but they also get convinced that co-sleeping will lead to kids who are totally dependent and never properly separate from moms.

It was eye opening for me and also helpful to hear her talk about other things that were different about attitudes between the US and where she was from. I didn't just suddenly start doing what she did (I actually never co-slept except when my baby was sick) but it was helpful to me to see a good, responsible mom who was just doing things differently than what "everyone" said you had to do. It made me realize that some of the conventional wisdom was just trends we were all following like lemmings, and I didn't have to.

I think the culture of motherhood and parenting in the DMV can be very stifling in certain corners, and the thing I notice the most is that a lot of moms seem scared of "doing it wrong" and getting called out or blamed for something that doesn't go perfectly for their kids. But parenting is never perfect. There are some obvious bright lines (don't hit kids, spend time with them, etc.) but there's a broad range of what works and what's good. You wouldn't think that walking into your average childbirth class or new parent group. There's just a lot of anxiety and fear. [/quote]

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