Dream Babies: Childcare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford

Front Cover
Frances Lincoln, 2007 - Family & Relationships - 384 pages
Parents have long been bombarded with conflicting advice on how to bring up their babies: from Locke, Rousseau, and Truby King to Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford. Behaviourist warnings in the 1920s about physical contact ('Never hug and kiss them. Never let them sit in your lap') swung to Jean Liedloff's 'continuum concept' that babies should be wrapped round mum and fed on demand. Today enthusiasts for the 'family bed' are at war with Gina Ford's call for a return to the strict routines of pre-Spock days. Who is right and who is wrong? In this updated edition of her classic account of how and why the experts' advice has changed with changing times, Christina Hardyment analyses the anxieties of our own age and gives parents much-needed confidence in their own ability to choose the advice that best suits them and their babies.

About the author (2007)

Christina Hardyment has written books and articles on dizzying range of subjects (including her collection of historical sewing machines, domestic technology, family life and a biography of Sir Thomas Malory). She lives in a rambling house in Oxford with a huge garden, where she is already planning camps and a treehouse for her seven grandchildren. Time off is spent sailing on the river, in a British Moth dinghy. To visit Christina Hardyment's website click here

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