Parenting programmes: One baby expert too many?
The uproar around a current baby-rearing reality TV programme could spell the beginning of the end for the spate of childcare gurus in the media, if its many critics have their way. Catherine Gaunt hears why
Television schedules are awash these days with programmes aimed at giving parents advice, but Channel 4's 'Bringing Up Baby' has infuriated childcare professionals and parents alike and sparked a call for an end to all such shows.
Child health experts want a body set up to regulate parenting television programmes, which they say 'experiment' on babies and children, with potentially damaging results.
As Nursery World reported last week, Clive Dorman of the Children's Project has started a petition on the 10 Downing Street website calling for a halt to programmes that promote 'outdated or discredited' parenting theories (4 October). The petition now has more than 1,900 signatures.
The media regulator Ofcom has received 580 complaints about 'Bringing Up Baby'.
The series follows six families who are assigned three different mentors to follow different parenting methods from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s during their babies' first three months of life.
The 1950s method of strict routine pioneered by Truby King and advocated on the programme by maternity nurse Claire Verity has attracted the most criticism.
It includes restricting cuddling the baby to only ten minutes a day, avoiding eye contact and leaving babies to cry.
Conflicting advice
Angry comments have been posted on the Channel 4 website. But Hamish Mykura, the commissioning editor for Channel 4, has also posted a message to reassure viewers. He says advice was sought from a GP, a neurologist and 'a highly qualified consultant paediatrician' who viewed all four episodes and whose advice was taken 'on several important changes to the editing and voice-over to make reference to current medical advice'.
He adds that it was made clear to the couples taking part 'that they would be free to decide what childcare method would work best for them'.
However, the outrage from parents has been such that Claire Verity's scheduled appearance at the Baby Show in Earl's Court, London, next week has been pulled after they threatened to protest there.
Ms Verity's most controversial advice is to leave babies to sleep in their own room from birth. This contradicts official advice from both the Department of Health and the cot death charity the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.
Last week FSID condemned Channel 4 for 'putting babies' lives at risk'.
Nicola Peckett of the FSID went on Radio 4's Today programme last week opposite the Channel 4 producer Daisy Goodwin.
Afterwards Ms Peckett told Nursery World, 'It's all very well having debates about things like when you should potty-train, but it's completely different when you are talking about matters of life and death. There should have been a warning in the first episode.'
She acknowledged that following the FSID's warning, the second episode included a voiceover saying that some experts believed that having a baby sleeping in the same room as the parents could prevent cot death.
But she added, 'What if the first episode is the only one you watch?' She said Channel 4's defence that there was up-to-date information on its website was not the same as putting a warning in the programme.
Evidence v opinion
Parent-infant psychotherapist Sue Gerhardt, the author of Why love matters: How affection shapes a baby's brain, says that parenting advice on TV should be more tightly regulated. 'There are so many of these programmes and some of them are extremely dubious ethically. We need a body to oversee them.'
The media appear to ignore the science and 'churns out attitudes rather than facts', she says. 'We have had several decades of brilliant research in the developmental sciences focused on infancy. We know far more about how babies develop and what happens in their brains now than ever before. But this programme ignores all the evidence and poses an outdated method as if it was a valid option. It is even framed as if it has been endorsed by celebrities (Jerry Hall) and costs a lot of money (£1,000 a day), so it must be terrific.'
Claire Verity's attitude that she was brought up in this way so it must be all right, says Ms Gerhardt, 'is like people who say, "I was smacked and I'm OK". But I'd like to think that we're moving away from the Stone Age, emotionally speaking.'
Ethical standards
The Association for Infant Mental Health, of which Sue Gerhardt is a committee member, also condemns the programme.
In a statement, the association says, '"Bringing up Baby" is not the first TV series to use the difficulties of volunteer parents and their volunteered babies to entertain the rest of us (think of "Baby Borrowers" or "Help, I'm a Teenage Mum"), but it is the worst and should be the last. If television production companies and networks cannot police their own ethics and promote accurate information that viewers can trust, and Ofcom cannot make voluntary codes effective, we need compulsory standards and an ethical review process for TV and radio programmes planning manipulations of infant care.'
Pat Wills, a parenting co-ordinator in Blackpool, is worried that many parents will follow advice simply because it is on television.
She says, 'In years gone by, parents would be reassured by families and friends, but we've lost that culture. The media has taken over as surrogate extended family.'
She fears that young, inexperienced people coming into childcare might think, for example, that it is accceptable to leave a child to cry. 'To say that it's OK to listen to children crying and crying is sending out wrong messages.'
Maggie Fisher, professional officer for Unite/Community Practitioner and Health Visitors Association and a practising health visitor, thinks there should be a proper ethics committee set up to protect children in the media, with members including infant mental health specialists, child psychologists, health visitors, midwives and paediatricians.
'There is an issue about protecting children from media exploitation. Babies can't give informed consent,' says Ms Fisher. 'We should be looking at what's in babies' best interests.'
Where health professionals are regulated and 'duty-bound to give evidence-based advice', she says, mentors on parenting programmes are not and their advice is based on their own opinions.
'There is nothing about respecting the baby's needs. It's a reciprocal relationship.' She calls Claire Verity's advice about not cuddling or looking at babies as 'very alarming'.
Voice of the child
The second 'Bringing Up Baby' programme shows Ms Verity telling one mother not to make eye contact with her baby during feeding. She says, 'Once he gets eye contact he knows that he's in charge - and he's not.'
Ms Fisher says, 'There's a suggestion that babies are playing you up. But newborn babies just don't have those processes.'
She adds, 'Parents like to have something to refer to, but there is a lot of conflicting advice from books and television programmes. I say choose the bit that works for you and be selective.'
She dismisses the programme's tactic of using childcare methods from different eras. 'They are looking at the 1950s, 60s and 70s, but we know an awful lot more now. We used to think it was OK to X-ray pregnant women! We should be using the latest evidence and best practice and research.'
Peter Elfer, senior lecturer in early childhood studies at Roehampton University, says that while watching the different parenting styles in the programme, he was struck by how 'the babies themselves were telling us through their responses how much they preferred to be handled, spoken to and cuddled. So if we are serious about hearing the voice of the child, these babies have given their verdict.'
The three different methods featured in Channel 4's 'Bringing Up Baby'
1950s The Feeding and Care of Baby by F. Truby King
(Macmillan, 1913, out of print)
- Parents should follow a strict routine
- Baby sleeps in own room from birth
- Parents and baby have limited physical contact
- Baby is put out for lots of fresh air
1960s Dr Spock's Baby and Childcare by Dr Benjamin Spock
(Simon and Schuster, 2005)
- No rules
- Parents should follow their instincts
- Baby sleeps in room with parents
- Every child is different
1970s The Continuum Concept by Jean Leidloff (Arkana, 1989)
- Infant carried in a sling for first six months, held constantly
- Baby shares the bed with parents
- Breastfeeding for first six months
- Idea based on Amazonian tribal life
