Kathleen and friends,
I and Lane Volpe wrote about some of these issues recently for Social Science and Medicine. The article is presently online (awaiting print publication in a special issue of sleep and health). If you can't access the journal please email me for a copy if you would like to read our take on this. Link here, (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612002924), abstract below.
Helen

The notion that infant sleep environments are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and that parents who receive appropriate instruction will modify their infant-care habits has been fundamental to SIDS reduction campaigns. However infant sleep location recommendations have failed to emulate the previously successful infant sleep position campaigns that dramatically reduced infant deaths. In this paper we discuss the conflict between ‘safeguarding’ and ‘well-being’, contradictory messages, and rejected advice regarding infant sleep location. Following a summary of the relevant background literature we argue that bed-sharing is not a modifiable infant-care practice that can be influenced by risk-education and simple recommendations. We propose that differentiation between infant-care practices, parental behaviors, and cultural beliefs would assist in the development of risk-reduction interventions. Failure to recognize the importance of infant sleep location to ethnic and sub-cultural identity, has led to inappropriate and ineffective risk-reduction messages that are rejected by their target populations. Furthermore transfer of recommendations from one geographic or cultural setting to another without evaluation of variation within and between the origin and destination populations has led to inappropriate targeting of groups or behaviors. We present examples of how more detailed research and culturally-embedded interventions could reorient discussion around infant sleep location.

Professor Helen Ball
Director of Postgraduate Studies, Sleep Lab Director,
Department of of Anthropology, Durham University,
Dawson Building, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK

T:0191 334 1602 F:0191 334 1615 E:[log in to unmask]
www.dur.ac.uk/anthropology; www.dur.ac.uk/sleep.lab
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Infant Sleep Information Source
www.isisonline.org.uk
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