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Information Regarding On Becoming Babywise

By Annabelle Holman


It is not easy to raise a child. In fact it is a process that takes some trial and error and not everyone is expected to know what they are doing, especially when it comes to first-time parents. The fact is that every child will be different and might require his or her own needs when it comes to sleeping, playing and eating. Robert Bucknam and Gary Ezzo and the two authors of the book On Becoming Babywise. This controversial work was meant to help parents.

This book was formerly published by Multnomah Books, but is now self-published through the publishing company of Ezzo known as Parent-Wise Solutions. Hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold. Bucknam is a pediatrician and Ezzo is known for his position as an evangelical Christian adviser. This was once a church-based resource book about how to rear an infant.

In the book, the writers suggest an infant care program. With this, the authors say, the baby will sleep through the night from the age of 7-9 weeks and beyond that. As many are aware, infants tend to wake up several times throughout the night and morning to get fed. With the program, emphasis is placed on parental control of a baby's play, feeding and sleep schedule instead of allowing the child to decide when it want to eat, play and sleep.

This concept is what brought a lot of criticism to the parenting book. This came from professionals, such as pediatricians, as well as parents. Their concern was that teaching people to rear an infant based on the advice of the book could lead to a higher risk of the child having emotional disorders, malnutrition and overall, failure to thrive.

Bucknam was recruited by Ezzo to make the book more secular. The newer edition with both writers was officially released in the first half of the 1990s. It was followed by four editions that published between the years of 1995 and 2007. This work talks about an infant management plan, based on the play, sleeping and feed cycles of infants, called parent-directed feeding or PDF.

In this book, there are directions related to caring for infants from birth up to six months old. It primarily covers topics of feeding and infant sleep. There is emphasis placed on parental control with infant training. According to the work, a baby is not to define the center of the household. Rather, they are just welcomed add-ons to the household who should follow with the order of the house. The things discussed in this book are not radical or new and might even be considered restatement of what Evangelical parents and even secular parents have been doing all along.

Both authors have said they stand in the middle ground between assigning a strict schedule for feeding time and feeding according to the demands of the baby. They also do not support co-sleeping. The advice offered in this is much like that seen in other publications.

There has been much criticism about this written work, especially by health care professionals in the mainstream who say it is filled with misinformation on important topics of infant sleep, feeding, growth and development. Still, some may find this book filled with important information that proves helpful in their situation. There are plenty of opinions about how to raise a child and because every child is different, the requirements might vary.




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