Parenting in America Stinks
Twenty-six years ago, I published a parenting book titled Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. Good sales numbers this far out from publication, continued attention from media, fan email, and royalty checks that still appear over a quarter of a century later tell me that a book about parenting written by an anthropologist of all things (not a “parenting expert,” not a pediatrician, not a child development researcher) rings true for so many Americans. The recent opinion piece in The New York Times by America’s Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy also reminds me why this book is still so popular—how we parent in America, and the way parents are treated by American society, is an indelible stain on this culture.
My book is not a parenting advice book. In no way does it tell you to do this or that to produce a good citizen or a happy baby. It has only one aim—to show that the way Westerners, especially Americans, treat their infants is ill-informed and odd and that our particular parenting style is the cause of so much disconnect between babies and their caretakers. I do that by looking into the evolutionary past of our species to understand why human babies are born so dependent and in need of constant care and then the book crosses topics and cultures to see how other people across the world parent. That broad survey is key to what Dr. Murthy has now deemed a crisis for American parents—the heavy stress and lack of support for parents in America. He writes, “Parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support” and he has issued a surgeon general’s advisory to promote “the mental health and well-being of parents” across the country.
I guarantee you that parents in other cultures would find Dr. Murthy’s declaration hilarious because, first of all, they see babies and children as assets, not burdens as we do in the West. They also already receive lots of collective help from family, friends, and older children. Parents in most other Western countries would also be confused because they receive long-term governmental and occupational support which allows them to prioritize parenting. American parents, in contrast, get nothing,
My book points out how American culture, in general, is pretty messed up about babies. We are a culture that runs on, and is so very proud of, the collective ideology of “independence and self-reliance.” That’s fine for young adults who are pushed to leave home at 18 and expected to disconnect from their families and make a household of their own, but embracing such a belief system is anathema for babies, and it’s not their fault.
Human infants are born neurologically unfinished and dependent because of the switch to bipedal walking by our ancestors about 5 million years ago. At that point in ancient history, our kind hadn’t yet evolved big brains, so birth was not that difficult. But then, about 3.5 million years later, our forebears had a major increase in brain size, which made birth difficult, even dangerous. An evolutionary compromise was required, and so babies were born earlier and therefore cognitively unfinished and physically dependent. As a result of this compromise, there is, in the words of famous pediatrician Donald Winnicott, “There’s not just a baby, but a baby and someone.” They are entwined. And yet, as the infant sleep researcher James McKenna put it, “Americans treat babies the way they want them to be, not as they are.”
Most importantly, Americans want their infants to sleep through the night, alone, like adults. Infant sleep patterns (or lack of same) are a major complaint brought to pediatricians, as if not sleeping through the night was an illness or a personality deficit. But human infants are born to expect physical attachment that soothes their inner baby restlessness which comes with an underdeveloped nervous system. They also need to eat every few hours and they wake up for that as well.
We also want them to stop crying and are advised to let an infant “cry it out” while not knowing what the “it” might be. American parents and advisors try to make this move less ugly by calling it a teaching moment, a chance to develop some advantageous skill for life that they have dubbed “self-soothing.” But it usually ends when the baby screams itself to sleep in exhaustion, accepting that no one is coming, ever. We also push for independence by ignoring their daytime cries and labeling crying babies as “needy” although they can’t even roll over.
In general, Americans want babies to be independent, self-reliant, in sync with our adult schedule, and quiet. We also hope that if we buy a few more gadgets and places to park babies, they will entertain themselves and we can get on with our adult lives. Babies in other cultures have a very different life. Across the rest of the world, they are always carried by a mother or someone else, they sleep with someone at night and on their mother or caretaker during the day. And they get to eat whenever they want, which makes better biological sense. Human milk is notoriously low in fat (compared to other mammals) so feedings need to be closely spaced, and more continuous, or babies cry because they are not sated. Infants in other countries are fed “on demand” (a negative phrase made up by Westerners) rather than on some adult’s schedule. Because babies are strapped to their mother’s bodies, it’s also easy enough for an older infant to wiggle about and grab a breast when hunger strikes.
American parents and babies are under such stress, and so unhappy much of the time, because there is a disconnect between what babies have evolved to expect and how this culture dictates a completely different script. And we pay for that disconnect every day, in public and private. Cross-cultural studies document that Western babies cry much longer than in other cultures, screaming that disconnect to an empty room.
America also stands out as the worst Western country in the world to become a parent because you are on your own, as Dr. Murthy emphasizes. In America, a mother might have 6 weeks of maternity leave. Perhaps a new mother or father is lucky enough to have relatives around for aid, but in most cases, parents try to figure out some kind of hodge-podge system to enroll kids into expensive daycare, or they quit work and wing it financially. In other cultures, it does indeed take a village. A visit to some other country where older kids are carrying infants, and everyone is playing together in view of a few adults seems like parental paradise even in the face of material poverty.
The precipitous drop in the birth rate in America and other Western cultures is often pinned on ambitious women who have cats rather than babies. But the painful truth is that this culture does not, in any way, value its youngest citizens and those who care for them.