Dear Friends:
    There is a chapter in Trevathan,Smith, and  McKenna's very interesting
book Evolutionary Medicine about infant crying  behavior and colic. "Normal"
crying behavior, or typical behavior, shows more  crying in the first 3 months of
life, and clustering in the late afternoon and  evening. When Kung San
infants are compared with Dutch and American mothers, the  frequency of crying is
the same, but the duration is hugely different. The  findings of the various
studies cited in this chapter show that caregiving style  affects infant crying,
and that it specifically affects crying duration but not  the frequency or
peak pattern.
    Crying is a signal for attention to which a  mother's instinctual
response is to feed the baby. This has many beneficial  effects: babies will grow
when they are fed and consequently have a better  chance of survival and a mother
who breastfeeds frequently maintains lactational  amenorrhea and thus there
won't be a sibling to compete with the infant for  milk.
    That said, there is nothing in this chapter about  any 'normal' crying
duration. This book and its statements appear to me like  some dreadful artifact
of detachment parenting making its way into yet another  culture.
    warmly,
Nikki Lee RN, MS, Mother of 2, IBCLC, CCE
Maternal-Child Adjunct  Faculty Union Institute and University
Film Reviews Editor, Journal of Human  Lactation
Support the WHO Code and the Mother-Friendly Childbirth  Initiative

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