I'm surprised you see baby-led weaning as a "silly modern fad that makes parents’ life unnecessarily harder". I confess to being a relatively lazy parent, and we did mostly BLW because we thought it made our lives easier! Rather than having to make purées, you can just give the baby some of what you're having. Then during the meal you can eat your own food while they mess about with and/or eat theirs, rather than spending the whole time trying to spoon-feed them. There is mess to clear up afterwards, but I think that's the case whatever feeding method you use (and we have easily cleanable floors). Also BLW seems closer to what most parents throughout history would have done, which is a point in its favour unless overridden by safety concerns or something.
Maybe we're using different definitions of BLW?
With co-sleeping I can see both sides (on the easy/hard question specifically, separately from any safety questions or emotional bonding questions). Some people (including me) feel that sharing your bed with a baby is completely destructive to your own sleep, while others feel that if your sleep is going to be interrupted anyway you may as well have the baby within reach rather than have to get up.
"I assume that the couple of people who think [having a pet] is ‘very harmful’ are going on some kind of safety or allergy issue"
Or maybe they mean harmful to the pet, and/or harmful to the child's moral development? I saw (and am vaguely intending to blog about) a YouGov survey showing a surprisingly high number of people who considered pet ownership unethical.
I think the gentle parenting thing isn't entirely inconsistent - there's a big difference between gentle boundary setting and complete abdication of parenting.
Eg You can both avoid raising your voice and punishing your child, and refuse to get them a smartphone early.
Gentle parenting doesn't mean no limits - you could argue with the definition of punishment (kids often react to the consequences of their actions as a punishment) but the idea is that you don't deliberately inflict extra suffering specifically as a punishment, rather than that you do anything they want or don't use force (as gently as possible) to rescue them from danger / stop them drawing on the wall etc.
I think this is a good steelman of what gentle parenting advocates believe.
I think they're wrong about this, and that the adoption of gentle parenting and cognate ideas is a big reason why so many parents today struggle with behaviour.
Really interesting!
I'm surprised you see baby-led weaning as a "silly modern fad that makes parents’ life unnecessarily harder". I confess to being a relatively lazy parent, and we did mostly BLW because we thought it made our lives easier! Rather than having to make purées, you can just give the baby some of what you're having. Then during the meal you can eat your own food while they mess about with and/or eat theirs, rather than spending the whole time trying to spoon-feed them. There is mess to clear up afterwards, but I think that's the case whatever feeding method you use (and we have easily cleanable floors). Also BLW seems closer to what most parents throughout history would have done, which is a point in its favour unless overridden by safety concerns or something.
Maybe we're using different definitions of BLW?
With co-sleeping I can see both sides (on the easy/hard question specifically, separately from any safety questions or emotional bonding questions). Some people (including me) feel that sharing your bed with a baby is completely destructive to your own sleep, while others feel that if your sleep is going to be interrupted anyway you may as well have the baby within reach rather than have to get up.
"I assume that the couple of people who think [having a pet] is ‘very harmful’ are going on some kind of safety or allergy issue"
Or maybe they mean harmful to the pet, and/or harmful to the child's moral development? I saw (and am vaguely intending to blog about) a YouGov survey showing a surprisingly high number of people who considered pet ownership unethical.
I think the gentle parenting thing isn't entirely inconsistent - there's a big difference between gentle boundary setting and complete abdication of parenting.
Eg You can both avoid raising your voice and punishing your child, and refuse to get them a smartphone early.
Gentle parenting doesn't mean no limits - you could argue with the definition of punishment (kids often react to the consequences of their actions as a punishment) but the idea is that you don't deliberately inflict extra suffering specifically as a punishment, rather than that you do anything they want or don't use force (as gently as possible) to rescue them from danger / stop them drawing on the wall etc.
I think this is a good steelman of what gentle parenting advocates believe.
I think they're wrong about this, and that the adoption of gentle parenting and cognate ideas is a big reason why so many parents today struggle with behaviour.
I would be very loathe to use AI on anything without checking it. It very often gets it wrong, or just makes up nonsense.