It nearly drove me over the edge, but a new study proves I
was right. Attachment parenting is, in fact, good for babies. For the
uninitiated, attachment parenting is an approach to infant care developed by a sadist
who, playing on new-mothers’ fears, prescribed never putting the baby down, not
even to take a dump. The new study measured how long babies cry and found that those
who are held for 16 hours a day tend to cry less overall than those who are
left to comfort themselves. What the study doesn’t say is how long the mothers
cried.
Even when I was bleary-eyed and on my knees begging my
husband to either kill or commit me, I didn’t put the damn baby down. Why?
Because an earlier study had shown that babies who are held a lot in their
first year “bond” with their mothers and develop better immune systems and go
on to become NASCAR heroes with their pictures on cereal boxes or something
like that.
I am a slave to studies. Occasionally I’ll make a decision
on my own, like when the second child came along and I tossed him into his crib
with a ham sandwich and a TV set and told him I’d come back when he could talk.
But typically, I am the one anxiously clearing the pantry shelves of fats one
day and filling them with Snackwells only to learn it was the refined flour
that was killing me in the first place. Back came the fats, but not the trans fats.
Out went the pretzels and in came the wonder foods — oatmeal, blueberries,
and pomegranates.
And why not follow the latest scientific findings? We are
lucky to have all this data at our fingertips. Let’s use it. Not everyone sees
it my way, however. Recently, when I was explaining how important it is to eat
dinner together — lower juvenile delinquency and drug use, higher grades,
etc. — my kids fought back.
“Studies show, studies show,” my 9-year-old said recently in
exasperation.
“Why don’t you take a chance,” the snarky teen, the one I once
held for 24 hours a day, added, “and actually learn something on your own?”
I’m not the only one being
held hostage by scientific studies. For most Americans, it started with
cholesterol in the ’70s. Early studies correlated high cholesterol with clogged
arteries and heart attacks, and we haven’t been the same since. My father, in
fact, had had his first heart attack in his mid-20s, so when a doctor told him
to watch his diet, he signed right on.
Suddenly all food was suspect. My childhood was a
roller-coaster ride of embracing and then rejecting the same foods —
margarine, eggs, pasta — as new studies contradicted old ones, showing how
healthy or, alternately, unhealthy these things were. And we weren’t the only
ones watching our diets. I remember the ads run by the panicking meat and milk
industries that feared their products would be made obsolete.
Fast forward to today. We’re all in thrall of each new
scientific-sounding health report, a trend not lost on the drug companies. In
fact, there’s even — surprise surprise — a new study that addresses this
phenomenon. A recent report shows that pharmaceutical companies are
systematically inventing diseases in order to sell more pills. Playing on our
desire to first medicalize and then improve our lives, these companies exaggerate
rare or mild diseases or characteristics for profit. For example, according to
the report, a charley horse is now “restless leg syndrome,” and ordinary
shyness is “social anxiety disorder.” And yup, you can buy medicine for both.
I’m a little behind
in my reading. I need to integrate a whole pile of new studies into my family’s
life. Caffeine makes you smarter and a better listener, I just learned, so from
now on I’ll make my kids chug a Red Bull right before the school bus comes.
I’ve temporarily lost my battle against video games because the children found
a study that showed that game-playing surgeons have better outcomes in
operations. I need to find an even newer study that shows that video games
cause brain death or small penises.
For now, I’m sticking with screaming and threatening. And
how lovely for me that a recent study shows that people perform better in an
atmosphere of fear. When it’s chore time, I’m breaking out the whip. I’m sure
my brother will love that. He once compared my parenting style to something
you’d find in a “19th-century British orphanage.” Fine, I used to think, he can
let his urchins run wild in the streets for all I care. But when he learns —
as I just did — that a recent study shows that strict parenting can lead to
obese children, I’ll never hear the end of it.
There are lots of stupid studies, like the one showing that macho
men who handle lingerie or see sexy pictures lose their bargaining skills. Duh.
My husband’s favorite study has to be the one that found that ill people feel
worse when their sympathetic spouse walks into the room. If the spouse is not
sympathetic, there is no increase in pain experienced by the sick one. If a
little bit of neglect is a good thing, my husband figures, a lot is even
better.
For now I’ll just keep smiling; even fake smiles can improve
your mood, you know. If that’s not enough, I’ll zap that forehead crease —
the one that wrinkles when you frown —
with Botox. It’ll make me happier. I have the report to prove it.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2006.
