Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Dads: the parents of least responsibility. Elizabeth beat me to this one, but I wanted to quickly highlight the Washington Post's take on the new SIDS guidelines.

The Post article takes the American Academy of Pediatrics as pretty much blaming working moms for SIDS, saying that affection-starved women are taking the kids to bed with them and leaving them with uneducated caregivers. Money passage:
The recommendations come as more and more American women are juggling the competing demands of work and motherhood. That has led to increasing numbers of new mothers to sleep with their babies in what some advocates call the family bed, as mothers search for any additional time to bond with newborns.
Here's the problem: the the AAP statement (pdf) make no reference to "American women ... juggling." It makes no real mention of mothers at all. Instead, the AAP talks a lot about "parental" care, which makes me very happy. Dads are involved in care. They're involved in SIDS prevention. This isn't a mothers-only issue, nor should it be. I expected better from the Post.

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