I brought the original article with me today so I can quote parts of it.  It
bothered me for several reasons and as I've read some of the posts
responding mine, some thoughts cross my mind that I will  try to make sense
of for you.  First, I agree with Barbara and never meant to imply that,
since Back to Sleep was the reported reason for this lack of crawling, that
I was against it.  I won't even try to argue with statistics about babies
saved, because clearly, THE most important thing is a living baby, flat
head, no-crawling or whatever.  I was mainly questioning whether that was
solely to blame, as the article implied:

<<Developmental specialists also say they believe they know why babies are
acting that way:  It is an entirely benign, but unexpected and unintended,
consequence of a public health campaign to teach parents to put babies to
sleep on their backs to prevent sudden infant death syndrome....Babies, it
turned out, like being on their backs so much that they appear to have no
incentive to turn over onto their stomachs.  "If you're lying on your tummy
and you want to see the world, you have to flip over,"  said Dr Ellen
Perrin, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Tufts University
School of Medicine and the Floating Hospital for Children at the New England
Medical Center.  "If you're on your back, there's no reason to flip onto
your tummy.">>

It seems to me that babies are on their backs more than just to sleep.
Obviously the babies being referred to are awake, as are they all for
various amounts of time during the day.  Still, apparently, they are on
their backs.  I am also curious about the SIDS statistics.  We probably
don't have any reliable way of finding out but I wonder if the cases of SIDS
have increased, and would that offset some of those numbers of SIDS
preventions?  More babies are sleeping alone, more are, if not totally
formula-fed, then at least supplemented with formula.  In all, fewer babies
being totally breastfed and co-sleeping.

Finally, I agree with Kathy D., who has made the point several times that
these are cultural issues and not all cultures are the same.  As I said in
my original post, in some cultures there are reasons not to let a baby down
on the ground or floor.  Barbara said,

<<I think, given the variety of human exper. we can't generalize too much
about these things.  There were tribes of American Indians who bound babies
in papoose boards, and Chinese who park babies on their backs in sand bags
all day while mother goes out to work. I'm not wild about bucket babies and
feel the same way about allowing tummy time, but as immobiliztion of infants
has long human history, I think we must be cautious about generalizing too
much.>>

While I agree with this in theory, there have also been cultures where
children are seen as mere property to be worked to death (the boatload of
kids sold into slavery, basically, for a few dollars) or they were to be
"seen but not heard" or, to our horror, they could be beaten into
submission.  In Indiana, we recently had a case of a 10 year old who shot
his father to death because the man was abusing everyone in the family and
though the boy tried to get help, and many could/should have, noone
intervened.   I think we'd probably all agree, these are not good situations
for children.  Just because a culture rears children in ways we don't
understand doesn't necessarily make it wrong, I agree.  However, sometimes
it is.  In this case, I believe the real issue is that babies are being
handled like 'things' and thus miss out on some important experiences in
being human.

This article apparently came out of the New York Times, titled: "Infants who
skip crawling still normal, research finds." and was written by Gina Kolata
and Howard Markel.  They say this came out of   <<two studies, one in the
U.S. and one in England, and that the doctors impressions reflect a real
change in infant development.  Babies are not turning over as early as they
once did.  And crawling, if it comes at all, occurs several months later
than it used to.>>

Marsha, whose sorry this got to be so long but I climb on my soapbox for
kids!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marsha Glass RN, BSN, IBCLC
Mothers have as powerful an influence over the welfare of future generations
as all other earthly causes combined.
C. Abbot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html