Thanks to all who have reflected my own gut reaction that it is wrong,
wrong, WRONG to call 90 minutes of daily crying 'normal' no matter what age
person we are talking about.  I've since discovered that the authors of this
book may have lifted the idea from the existing freebie book, in which a
pediatrician of whom I think very highly writes 'one study that found that
babies up to three months, cried on average 1.6 hours per day, and that
after 3 months it decreased to 1.3 hours per day'.  He did not call it
normal in so many words, but neither did he comment on the researchers'
frame of reference.  There was no citation provided.
I have looked in several of my books, and it was in 'Bestfeeding' by Renfrew
and Fisher I found this, under 'myths' on p. 157:
"MYTH: Young babies always cry a lot, so you should leave your baby to cry.
REALITY: A baby has all the feelings an adult has.  She cries because she
has a need.  Crying only expresses pain or upset, nothing else.  People
comfort adults who cry.  A baby cannot meet most of her own needs, and she
needs us to take her crying seriously; she needs comfort too (see pages
XX)."

A look at the pages in question is also very encouraging, as the authors
give a compassionate, helpful account of reasons babies cry, and suggestions
for how to help deal with them.  They also make it clear that they never use
the phrase 'demand feeding'; they say 'flexible feeding' and define it as
'feeding a baby when the mother and child decide the time is right rather
than by a set schedule'.  In other words, they don't call a baby 'demanding'
when all the baby is doing is responding to a biological need.

I think I am going to have to address infant crying more specifically in the
teaching sessions we have on our ward.  It is quite common for parents to
say 'but they just need to cry sometimes, right?  I mean, we can't pick them
up every time they cry?!'  Sure, babies have feelings that need to be
expressed and sometimes crying is the appropriate expression thereof, AND it
is always an attempt at communication which should be responded to and
acknowledged if we want our child to be able to acknowledge the feelings of
others later.

Sigh.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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