Sleep Training: What we Know (and what we DON’T KNOW) from the Research
Episode 48: Sleep Training: What we Know (and what we DON’T KNOW) from the Research with Amanda Ruggeri
This week Rachael and Amanda Ruggeri, a journalist specializing in psychology, parenting, and child development, discuss the ever controversial topic: sleep training. Amanda speaks about her articles on baby sleep and sleep training and the research behind them.
Here’s what they discuss inside this episode:
Understanding biologically normal, healthy baby sleep
The problematic messaging around sleep training
Are we just extinguishing baby's signaling?
Is sleep training truly teaching self-settling skills?
Is the sleep quality or duration better for babies who are sleep trained vs not?
The importance of providing parents with the full picture & allowing them to make informed decisions
The cultural differences in attitudes towards baby sleep, bed sharing etc.
Social media misinformation, biases and logical fallacies
The problem with overly relying on internet “experts” and “data” for parenting decisions
& so much more!
Amanda Ruggeri is a multi award-winning journalist specializing in psychology, parenting, and child development. She also covers media and science literacy, including on her Instagram page and in her column for the BBC, "How Not to Be Manipulated". As a triple-citizen who has lived in four countries, she's especially interested in breaking topics down from not only a scientific, but a cross-cultural, anthropological, and historical, perspective. Her stories on infant sleep - including the science of healthy baby sleep and what we do and don't know about sleep training - have been read by more than 3 million people worldwide. You can find her work most frequently on the BBC's science section, Scientific American, New Scientist, and the Jacob Foundation's BOLD.expert, as well as on her Instagram page @mandyruggeri.
Mentioned in this episode:
Amanda's website: https://www.amandaruggeri.com/
Amanda's instagram: @mandyruggeri
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate 5⭐️ and write us a review! ⬇️
✨For sleep support and resources, visit heysleepybaby.com and follow @heysleepybaby on Instagram! 😴☁️🤎✨
Rachael is a mom of 3, founder of Hey, Sleepy Baby, and the host of this podcast.
Listen to the full episode
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Welcome back to the podcast today. I'm speaking with Amanda Ruggeri, a multi -award winning journalist specializing in psychology, parenting, and child development. She also covers media and science literacy, including on her Instagram page and in her column for the BBC, How Not To Be Manipulated. As a triple citizen who has lived in four countries, she's especially interested in breaking topics down from not only scientific but cross -cultural,
anthropological and historical perspectives. Her stories on infant sleep, including the science of healthy baby sleep and what we do and don't know about sleep training have been read by more than 3 million people worldwide.And you can find her work most frequently on the BBC's Science section, Scientific American, New Scientist, and the Jacob Foundation's bold .expert as well as on her own Instagram page @mandyruggeri.
I have been connected with you for such a long time, it feels like now just through Instagram. And I'm so excited to have you. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for having me.
So we mentioned in the intro your two articles on sleep for the BBC that are so, they're so prolific now. And I feel like a lot of those 3 million readers had to have come from my page because I recommend those pieces all the time. They're just such a perfect, I'll link them in the show notes too just in case anybody has not come across them yet, but they're such a perfect summarization of what we do and don't know about baby sleep and about sleep training in particular. Was that just assigned to you or was that something you took a special interest in?
That was definitely something I took a special interest in and thank you for sharing it with your readers, by the way. I'm sure they were a big driver of all those readers. So, yeah, I mean, as a little bit of quick background, I mean, I came into maternity leave, actually, from being the editor of what was then called BBC Feature, which was, at the time, bbc .com's international facing science and evidence -based site. It's now been rolled into other parts of the BBC, but that's neither here nor there. And a lot of what we did was very much not only looking at original evidence and research and talking to researchers. But often also as is necessary when you're doing that kind of thing, sort of debunking some cultural constructs or narratives, you know, stuff that came out of like the wellness industry or during the COVID pandemic, like there was all kinds of, you know, myths for us to bust.
So I came right out of that into having a baby. And as you can imagine, like spending a lot of time scrolling social media and talking to other moms. And I started noticing this really interesting thing, and I think, again, especially coming out of having edited so many pieces on wellness topics and health topics, you know, there's a big kind of red flag with a lot of wellness stuff, which is to say something will work for everyone. Right? Like, if somebody says, "This diet is going to make you person, I don't know," so much healthier and thinner and it's going to have these permanent great changes to your life, that should kind of make you sit up and go, "Huh, really? How do you know that?"
Yet I was seeing this so often on social media when it came to a lot of topics regarding infants, but I think especially baby sleep. And I think my first reaction was to be like, "Huh, there must be really solid evidence for this, for these kinds of claims to be being made." And I also saw the same claims in some of the baby books I had, and I won't name names, but there very much seemed to be this agreement, right, that this research is totally rock -solid, but being a journalist, being a science journalist, I was like, "Well, let me go read these studies." and I was just really surprised that actually they were much more nuanced, much more complex than I think a lot of the messaging out there would have you believe. So then I went and pitched these stories and yeah, the rest is baby sleep journalism history.
Amazing. So did you have a personal vested interest in it because of your daughter as well,
'cause I know she's like four now, right?
Yeah, she's three.
She's three, okay, oh my gosh.
She's three, yeah. I mean, I did in terms of, like I very much used the research I was doing and the conversations I was having with researchers and scientists to potentially inform how I dealt with her sleep. But I actually came into it really like, I mean, I thought I'd probably sleep train her. Like I didn't, you know, I just, it wasn't something I'd ever really looked into. So you just kind of, I think, go with what the cultural narrative and what the messaging is. I was like, oh, is this something I'll probably do? Like it seems like it's fine.
So yeah, I had a vested interest in terms of knowing I wanted to probably implement some of what I found out, but I didn't go into it with any like preconceived ideas of what that was gonna be.
Right, were you shocked when you became a mom about how babies actually do sleep? I feel like that's a real big shock to most of us.
For sure, I was like, "Don't you just put them in a crib and, you know, and they fall asleep?" And I mean, and that's what you see, like, you know, on all the TV shows and the movies. And I still laugh when I, I was just watching a TV show and Netflix a few days ago and like my jaw dropped because they put the baby in a crib and the baby doesn't fall asleep right away. And I was like, wow, that's so unusual for a show. Like that they actually show this baby fussing a little bit. After 30 seconds, she went to sleep. Don't get me wrong. But you know, yeah, it's just not what we're shown.
Yeah, and that's why I'm so happy that those pieces came out and they were so popular 'cause parents really don't have any idea what they're in for with sleep when they're pregnant for the first time or welcoming their first or even their second baby. It's just kind of elusive. So I love that you're putting this information out there and it's just these articles are so just non -judgmental. They're just the facts. And I think they're just really eye -opening. I've also had a lot of people say that they've been so helpful with talking to their partners or their family members who've been pressuring them to, you know, sleep train or to get their baby on some type of better schedule or something like that. And they send them these articles and they shut up because they're just so scientifically sound and they just make so much sense. So again, just could not be more grateful for those pieces in particular, but you've written a lot of really, really amazing pieces. One that just came out on bed sharing as well that I thought was just incredible. Was that another one that you pitched just because you kind of saw the need and saw a lot of misinformation and stuff about it or?
A hundred percent. I mean I have so many ideas my issue is like not having all the time to pitch and actually write all of them rather than so no I usually come up with the ideas for what I write myself and yeah that was another one where I think um you know it's interesting you said my stories are non -judgmental because I think these can be really hard topics to talk about about or to be received by people in a non -judgmental way. I know you've been on one side of that quite a lot. And yeah, bed sharing is one too, where I think people can get really into two camps about it.
And it's so interesting because sleep training was the same. What is biologically healthy baby sleep is the same? Bed sharing is the same. Where for the most part, when you actually talk to the researchers, The scientists studying this stuff, they are often not as polarized about it as the general public because they understand the limitations.
For the most part, there's exceptions, but generally speaking, they tend to understand the limitations to the studies that they're designing and carrying out. They know full well what their colleagues who don't agree with all their conclusions have to say like they they kind of get this I think in a way that the general public often doesn't so it's always so interesting to me when I talk to the people involved in these topics to to get their take and yeah bed sharing was one of them…… where of course there's a lot of kind of academic research disagreement about if you bed share as safely as possible, how much is the risk elevated or is it at all compared to compared to having baby in the same room with you but not on the same surface, like yes, there is disagreement about that.
But a lot of the big disagreement seems to be around what do we do with this information? Do you tell parents just never to do it ever, ever, or do you kind of approach it in an informed choice kind of way? So that was the piece I wrote about bed sharing was saying actually parents deserve to be given the information and be able to make the choice in as safe a way as possible if they choose to do it.
100%. I feel the same way and I've tried so hard to educate on it, but it is a very fraught topic especially on social media. So again, I just appreciate you for putting that out there and so that more parents can hopefully find that information and use it to be as safe as possible.
You just mentioned biologically normal sleep, and that's something that I talk about at nauseam. And for anyone listening though, who maybe doesn't follow my page and just listens to the podcast, can you help us understand what you mean by biologically normal sleep?
Yeah, I mean, I probably should have said biologically healthy baby sleep, 'cause I know normal. We can like debate-- - Normal is like a charged word, I guess. But we, - Yeah, we know what you mean.
Yeah, you know what I mean. So yeah, basically just what is kind of developmentally to be expected with infants? Because I feel like what I learned researching this piece was again,
that cultural narrative, as you and I know and we were just talking about, is yeah, baby from newborn stage, you just pop 'em in a crib, they fall asleep, bang, boom, everybody sleeps through the night, fine.
Biologically, developmentally, standard infant sleep looks very different and it, as a lot of us know, we've been in the trenches, you know, it includes a lot of wakes during the night. It involves a lot of seeking co -regulation from a caregiver, i .e. in plain English, like wanting to be close to you, wanting to be held by you, maybe wanting to be breastfed by you if you're breastfeeding, whatever it is. It involves inconsistent sleep, like schedules work great for some babies, but there's a lot of babies for whom that's really tough. It can involve late bedtimes, especially for younger babies. So the seven to seven idea is a bit of a very difficult, I think, construct for a lot of people to adhere to.
So yeah, and I think above anything else, it is varied. So I think that was one of my main takeaways from reading the research is, yeah, there are babies who will sleep 15 hours in 24, and there are babies who will sleep 10 or 9, and the variation is just really, really, really huge. And so I think whenever we are talking about baby sleep, it's so easy to just wind up thinking about or talking about this ideal or this narrative we've been told is standard. And actually babies are, you know, they're individuals, they're not robots. So they're all different too. And that is biologically normal and healthy.
Yeah. And so much of what fascinates me about this too, and I know it does for you as well, is the cultural piece around Just our expectations of what babies should be doing and how they should be sleeping. And I know you're currently living in Europe. I would love to hear a little bit about what the ideas are about baby sleep there compared to us in the US who are so obsessed with it.
It's funny because I was just talking to a friend about this a few weeks ago. She is Swiss. I live in Switzerland. She grew up here, but she moved To California in her 20s had her baby there and then actually recently moved back here and she said to me and like we weren't even talking about sleep specifically but she said "oh you know what one of the things I was really glad to come back to was this culture where people are not obsessed with baby sleep and sleep training."
Like she felt like even though her baby was I think only four months old when they left the US she was already hearing so much about it and it was really stressing her out so I think you know my daughter's three now so it feels like we're a little bit out of that stage so I don't hear you know other moms with kids the same age we're not talking about it quite as much maybe as when my daughter was younger but it very much seems to be a less of a thing here…. it's still a thing like I read a study once that said I think it was one -third of mothers in Switzerland had tried to sleep train their kid. So it is still a thing, but yeah, it's just, it just feels lower, less pressured. Co -sleeping is more popular, all that stuff.
And do you find that that is pretty common throughout different countries in Europe,
or does it really vary from culture to culture, do you think?
Well, I moved here a couple years ago from the UK. My daughter was actually born in the UK, and sleep training culture and just kind of the focus on infant sleep is very is pretty big there so you know the UK I think felt to me a little bit more like what I hear about the US in that in that perspective. I do think where I am in Europe seems different and just from what I've kind of heard from people in like Austria, Italy and kind of you of other parts of continental Europe, it is a little bit more relaxed there too.
Yeah, and it makes sense. I mean, here in the US, we obviously have so many policies that are just so unfamily friendly and not friendly to mom or baby and there's just so much pressure to get back to work and be productive. And so it's really no wonder that sleep training feels like a necessity for so many people. But Then you look at places like Canada that has a very generous maternity leave for many people, not everybody, but very generous compared to here. And sleep training is still huge there, and not everywhere. I don't live there, so I don't know the details of city versus country or whatever, but I do know that 30 to 40%, I think, of my audience is from Canada. People are looking for this information and seeking out information on baby sleep. They're not just Going with the flow and seeing what happens,
right? So it is interesting. What do you think about that?
Yeah, I think about that. I was just thinking about this this morning actually because You know when people sort of ask like, okay, what is the alternative to something like sleep training? There's lots of alternatives, but I think one that always comes to my mind is like, okay Structurally as a community as a society, what can we be offering families? And I think that is really important to think about, especially in the context of a place like the US where there's no federal parental leave and things like that.
But yeah, I do think it's interesting that these other countries, Canada, Australia is another one. I mean, there's a very, from what I understand, speaking to people, there are very big sleep training culture there. That's where they actually have the kind of clinics where you can go and take your baby and have it be led through it by a healthcare provider and they've got much more generous parental leave policies than the U .S. as well. So I think it's a piece of the puzzle, but to say it's the whole thing, that's not quite right either.
Yeah, no, I agree. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Okay, we're back and you, so we were just talking a little bit about sleep training and you did write a piece all about what actually happens when babies are left to cry it out. So there's a lot of debate around this and I think a lot of people don't want to say certain things out loud because they don't want parents who have done this to feel badly or to worry that they've damaged their baby in any way. And as someone who did sleep train my first and spoiler alert, it went horribly, I completely empathize with and understand why people get defensive and start to feel bad about it with this topic.
But at the same time, I think it's really important for people to be realistic and to understand what they're actually doing, what's actually happening before they decide to make that decision. And I think one of the biggest frustrations for me working in this industry of baby sleep is that people just throw around studies, they throw around abstract headlines, whatever, to kind of prove their point or solidify their point. And as you said at the beginning, the studies themselves are so much more nuanced and they're so much more limited than the average person would understand. So you don't have to dive into your whole piece. I will definitely link it here for those who want to read it. But what were you kind of like your big takeaways or any of your big surprises when you were writing about sleep training specifically?
So I think my biggest takeaway and the biggest surprise for me as somebody coming into it without a lot of background, let me start that over again. I think the biggest surprise for me And the biggest takeaway was about what sleep training is actually supposed to do. So if you,
you know, read different messages and communications and the kind of narrative that we're often told about sleep training is that it's supposed to give your baby the gift of sleep,
right? It teaches your baby how to sleep, they sleep longer, they sleep better, they wake up so much more refreshed and all the rest.
If you talk to the researchers who have done these studies, including researchers who are very pro sleep training, some of them have written books telling people how to do controlled crying with their kids, they will say to you, or they said to me, oh, that's not what these methods do. They're called, and in research, they're actually not called, you know, sleep training is kind of a fuzzy term, we should probably define it at some point in this chat, but in the research, it's not called that. So in the research, they're usually called behavioral sleep interventions. And normally the ones that are being looked at are extinction methods.
So there's the classic extinction method of like just closing the door or unmodified extinction where it's just kind of closing the door, what have you on the baby and not going back in. Also colloquially called cry it out. And then there is modified or graduated extinction, which like we would call controlled crying or something like Ferber, right? But extinction, what you're extinguishing, the reason that these BSI's are called extinction, is not because you're extinguishing wakes, it's not because you're extinguishing necessarily bad sleep habits, you are extinguishing the baby signaling, i .e. crying out, calling out for a caregiver. And that's the point. The point is for them to quote unquote, learn to self settle, right? To put themselves back to sleep when they've woken up. Not for them to quote unquote, sleep through the night. And I think that was so surprising to me just because that's often not what we're told. You're told that these methods are to help a baby sleep longer and better.
But the data also doesn't show that. So it's not just in the name extinction, it's also in what the studies themselves show. Most studies have been done relying just on what's called parent reports. So a parent's assessment of how their baby slept the next day. And obviously the issue there is that If your baby is no longer waking up and signaling for you, you're not necessarily going to know when they woke up, right? So you might think they slept through the night, even if they woke up and put themselves back to sleep. Only a handful of studies have been done using an objective measure of sleep, like "actigraphy" is one example.
And those have found very little to no difference in terms of actual sleep time or even number of wakes between babies who are and aren't sleep trained. So again, not that surprising to the researchers involved necessarily because it's not necessarily the point of the interventions, but I think definitely surprising to the larger community who's used to hearing that sleep training will help your baby sleep better.
Yeah, 100%. And I think another thing that's kind of sold about it is that it will set up these habits for life and you're you know you have to do a few tough nights of crying and then you're going to have a great sleeper forever and like your job is done and it's quick it's easy and it's effective and it's safe and there's just all these bold claims and then when you actually dig into the research you find that it's usually actually a very short -term solution for most.
They either have to retrain several times in that first year or it just completely stops working by toddler hood and then you know the child is reverting back to crying at bedtime or not wanting the parent to leave or leaving their room and coming into the parent's bed at night all the things that normal toddlers will do and that I think is a really big shock to parents as well and they feel very duped when they find out that that's the case because they've already shelled out hundreds of dollars on this sleep training program with all of these promises.
Yeah. Yeah. And I want to be really clear here. And I know that you, I think you agree with this too, that it can work for a lot of families. It can be a lifesaver for a lot of families, maybe even just that few weeks of like, you know, not having to wake up in the middle of the night, maybe that saved your sanity. So none of this is to say that there's no value in this for anyone whatsoever. But I think what you said there was so important where families feel duped.
I do think there are a lot of parents who do feel misled because they weren't given the full picture. And so that's, whenever I'm coming at a topic like this, for me personally, I like, I'm never trying to tell anyone what to do. I really don't have interest in what anybody listening to this, what your specific family does. Every family has to do what's best for them, full stop. And I think you cannot make that decision if you're only given some of the information, right? Like how can you make that decision if you're not aware that for so many families it's something that might have to be repeated a few times in that year or whatever, whatever the nuances are that might help you. I just, yeah, I just don't think it can be an informed decision without information.
Yeah, or just the idea that you have a choice at all. I think a lot of parents enter it because they're desperate, they're exhausted, they have other kids, they have jobs, they just are at the end of their rope and they have to do it. And that's one thing, like that's who could blame them really. But then there's this other part of the population that does it just 'cause they think they have to, or just because everybody else is doing it, or just because their pediatrician says, oh, it's time to sleep train. And they're just like, oh, okay, I guess we're going to do this. So for me, it's that piece too, where it's parents who are weighing the decision and weighing the pros and cons. Sure, I of course want them to have access to all of the information so that they can make an informed choice. That's so important to me.
But the other piece that's so important to me is catching those parents earlier before they even think that they have to make that choice and just showing them, hey, This is something people might tell you you have to do. This is something you might hear about sometimes, just so you know, it's completely optional. You don't have to do it. Your life will not be ruined if you don't do it. I think that's such an important piece of the conversation too is 'cause it is like a cultural norm here and people don't even think twice about do I actually want to do this?
Do I actually have to do this? You know, is this necessary? We're gonna take one more quick break and when we come back I would love to hear more about the social media side of things because you have been doing some amazing work on there recently, teaching how to spot misinformation.
We're back from the break and we've been talking about sleep and sleep training, but really there's so much parenting misinformation and divisiveness and opinions out there on social media in particular. And you have recently, not recently, but you, I feel like your page has really kind of blown up recently or you've been maybe just putting out more content recently. But if you're listening, you might recognize Mandy from her Instagram page where she talks all about parenting science.
And in particular, I love your videos about how parents can spot misinformation and how they can know who to trust. 'Cause it seems like we're in the age of experts right now and I'm including myself in that.
Like I don't think that I'm any better than anybody else, but we do seem to be kind of inundated with parenting experts and influencers and opinions on everything when it comes to parenting. So I would love for you to kind of help us figure out, A, how to spot misinformation and be how to know who to trust when it comes to parenting information,
or should we be getting our information from social media at all?
Great question. I mean, I do think there is some indication and speaking as somebody who's trying to, you know, build my social media platform a little bit, somebody else who's built hers so, so well, I realize it's kind of ironic or paradoxical for us to be talking about this. But yeah,
I mean, I think social media is really tough, because anybody can start an account. You've just got that on Instagram, I love you just got that really short little bio. So somebody can just put one little sentence and like, it can make them sound so credentialed.
But like, you don't have any idea of what their full background is at all. So I think it can be, it can be really hard to wade through everything. Obviously, there's also the issue where the posts that get the most traction tend to be those that are kind of the most emotive or the most divisive. And, you know, often that's not where the truth lies. It's a little bit more in the middle or it's a bit more nuanced. And I mean, I can tell you, like, I try to talk in terms of nuance and complexity all the time and the more I do that the worse those posts perform.
So I'm gonna keep doing it but it's just I feel like all of the cards are stacked against parents or really anyone trying to get legit information in this space. Now that being said obviously there are really good accounts on there and and you can kind of sift out I think the less good information if you're careful, so one thing that I always like to look at, so there's credentials, experience, all that stuff is super important, and I think the other thing that people don't think about perhaps as much is just sort of how somebody is communicating about something, so how is an expert giving advice.
Not just what are they giving on and what are their credentials, but also how are they doing that and…. you know a red flag for me that I've talked about before is people talking in terms of absolutes or guarantees or certainties. So if you do this this will happen if you do this this will not happen it totally won't happen that's you know that's fear among like anything that's too black and white because um there are some things we can be black and white about about, but when it comes to an area as complex as psychology and child development, there's a lot of gray area. So whenever I see absolutes and these kinds of guarantees, that kind of often feels like a bit of a red flag to me.
Then there's something else I see a lot, and this isn't just from creators, but also just in the comments on a post, logical fallacies, you know, is something I love to geek out about. Because I really think they're one of those things that if we all were a little bit more well -versed in them, or even knew that they were a thing, we would just have such more constructive discussions about things, because I think that's one place where social media can really fall apart is when people are just going at, you know, having arguments in the comment sections and like the argument isn't even argumenting. Like they're not even arguing with each other, you know, like what are they arguing with? And it's just nobody wins from that.
So I love logical fallacies. There are so many, but yeah, I think just being aware of those can be a really good first step. And because not everyone might necessarily know what that even means, a logical fallacy is basically a flaw in reasoning in an argument that can make an argument sound more convincing, but actually doesn't bolster the logic of the argument at all. In fact, it detracts from it.
Yeah, I love the post that you did on logical fallacies. And I kind of did a riff on it for spotting logical fallacies in sleep training. They are rife with them… like they say you know you need to sleep train to save your marriage or the gift of sleep or all these crazy ones and we see it so much not just in the baby sleep world but in general in comment sections like just the what about ism that's coming about constantly now with things that are happening in the world and like you said it's just so unproductive and just really waters down any argument.
100%.
So what are some things that parents could look for? Because I know, you know, like you said, there are credentials and experience and all of that, but do credentials or like fancy letters after their name or like tons of degrees, does that necessarily mean that a person is qualified to speak on the topic that they're speaking about necessarily?
No, not always. So I think that, so this can also kind of be a cognitive bias that we have, or a logical fallacy people can fall into. Appeal to authority. So if somebody, you know, got a good education, has, as you say, a bunch of letters after their name, if they're in an esteemed and, you know, doctor, lawyer, what have you.
Economist.
Economist. It means that a lot of us are sort of primed. It's a cognitive bias where we are primed to think that their opinion holds more weight, even if, and I think this is the really tricky part, even if it's an opinion about something outside of their scope. So, you know, if it's a lawyer talking about something medical, to talk, you know, to take a completely unrelated to anything example. We still think they know what they're talking about more than we do. Forgetting, that's not something they have any training in. So that, I think, can be really tricky. It can really trip people up. And I think it gets even trickier when you talk about scopes within scopes.
So, you know, I've done a post before on, you know, pediatricians are great. Like if I had any question about my child having a cough, a cold, whatever, I would and I do go see our pediatrician all the time. Like they are super, super well -trained in a lot of things. One thing that they do not traditionally receive a ton of training in is infant and child sleep. So there's numerous pieces of research that have shown they get on average less than something like 20 minutes of instruction on that topic.
Now, do they still accrue experience through talking to patients and their families and so on over the years? Yes, for sure. But I think even that is a little tricky 'cause that can be kind of anecdotal and I wouldn't necessarily say that every pediatrician, just because they're a pediatrician, is like a leading authority on infant sleep, right? And yet, you would possibly think that they are. So it's really, really tricky. And yeah, I think it just adds to the complexity and the confusion even more.
Yeah, and I think There's also this obsession right now with parents looking for data and parents looking for who's the most credentialed expert, who's like got the most PhDs, who has read every single study on this topic, and we're obsessed with finding like the quote unquote best answer or the quote unquote most evidence based answer. And I think it comes from such a wonderful place that we want to make educated decisions, but I think the pendulum has almost gone too far. And I would love to hear your thoughts on using data in parenting choices.
Yeah, so I think about this a lot. And I also sometimes think about like, am I contributing to this problem in any way by writing stories for the BBC on things like, you know, what do we know about the risks and benefits of baby led weaning, you know? Right.
So like realizing I'm maybe part of the problem here, it is something I, I notice, and I think about a lot, I think there's a lot of reasons for this. I do think it is a particular moment in parenting culture where we're doing this. I don't get the impression it's always been this way. It seems like we are turning to experts possibly more than ever before. Our villages have crumbled, right? We're parenting in isolation. We're turning to these other authority figures. We also feel like parenting is more high stakes now than ever before because there's all this fear that our kids are going to grow up and go out into this world and really have to fend for themselves.
And if they don't have a great education and job in XYZ, how are they going to thrive or survive? And So there's this very high stakes element, and at the same time, I think this whole kind of culture of like over information almost, where we feel like, okay, if we don't make the right decision with this, with discipline, with sleep, with how to wean, with all these different things, like we're setting our child up for failure, we're gonna screw them up forever. And so I think it just all kind of blends into this like yeah just this recipe for parenting that's that can be quite anxiety -infused and and can lead us to really seeking out data data data data on everything and you know the problem and I've covered this on my on my page before on Instagram is like data alone can't give us the full picture.
I mean, I'm speaking as a science journalist here, like I really care about science. I believe in science and the scientific process, and if we are just making decisions based on the outcomes of certain studies, we're kind of missing a big part of the picture because depending on what you're talking about, the studies might not be that high quality or there might not be that many of them or there might be a lot of confounding factors or maybe there is a really clear scientific consensus about something but it's not right for your family or it's not right for your child because your child is not an average that was included in this study or it goes against an ideal or a value that you have or you know there's so many different things that go into it that I think we are overlooking when we just focus on data data data.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. So as far as your own parenting, what is something that you wish you had known before you became a mom? What's something that no one told you that you wish you had known?
So one thing that I wish I had known before I became a parent that I think I'm embracing more every day now is The idea that parenting is really a relationship with another human being. It's not something you do to someone. It's not a way to control someone else. It's not a way to optimize for certain outcomes for them or for your family. It's a relationship. And so just like in any relationship, the same way I influence my child, she's gonna have influences on me and that's okay. And that's the beauty of it. I think that's the thing that we don't talk about enough.
Yeah, I think that's so beautiful, and I love that so much. I hope people will take that in. Mandy, where can people find your amazing resources and some of the pieces that we've been talking about? I will link everything in the show notes, but where can people find you and connect with you?
So Mandy Ruggieri on Instagram, and I try to remember to post, to kind of update my link in bio with recent stories I've written, as well as my website amandaruggeri.com. But my byline is actually Amanda, which confuses people. I always worry I do seem like a little bit of a social media fraud myself. People go to Google "Mandy Ruggeri, journalist !" They're like, "There is no journalist in Mandy Ruggeri !" So that is why. But yeah, that's that's probably the best place to find me.
Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining today and for having this conversation with me. I hope everyone will come check out your page because you talk about this kind of thing all the time in such a perfectly clear, nuanced way, which is really, really hard to do on social media, so I appreciate you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for having me.
