Quoting Felicia Henry:
I think the confusion is the term purple.  I use this when teaching my students about the normal newborn.  Purple does not mean the baby cries until they are purple it stands for P - Peak, crying from 2 to 5 months (peak crying months), U - unpredictable - coming and going for no reason (or one not easily found by parents), R - baby Resists soothing (the usual picking up and such doesn't seem to be working), P - baby looks like he's in Pain (drawing the legs up), L - long periods of crying, up to 2 hours (longer is then considered colic), E- evening is the common time for this (used to be called 'witching hour').  This is normal and not colic and typical soothing is 3 steps - contact, carry, walk & talk to baby to avoid shaking.

The doctor who developed this campaign is from Canada, and I have interviewed him many times. I think he has done excellent research on this topic and in particular has studied babies in societies around the world to truly understand all aspects of infant crying. He commented that in more tribal societies, babies initiate crying just as often as in North America and Western Europe, but the total duration of crying is much, much less because the babies are responded to within seconds. He also found that the amount of time that North American babies are in physical contact with their parents is only a couple of hours a day in total, while in tribal societies it is close to 24/7. That's why he has "contact" as the first step in soothing. He feels being out of contact with mother/parent is a major cause of crying. I use his "contact, carry, walk and talk" all the time.

But he also found that in all societies, there is a fairly wide range of crying, and that there are always some babies who cry more, despite the fast response, carrying, feeding on demand, etc. In other societies, mothers seem to just accept that, and other adults in the community help the mother when things get tough. He feels that some babies are just more sensitive and intense, and so their crying is hard to soothe. Not that it should be ignored, but that mothers should not feel like they are "bad mothers" or that the baby doesn't like them, which is what often happens in North America. After being involved in many cases of babies who were shaken because of their crying, he developed this program to help the parents understand and not abuse the babies, as Felicia points out. 

He also had some interesting comments on breastfeeding. He feels, based on his research, that our usual ideas of "feeding on demand" (8 to 12 times in 24 hours) are way off, and that it should be more like every 15 minutes or so most of the time, with perhaps some longer stretches during sleep (the pattern in many tribal societies). He had some research to show that this keeps the baby's blood sugars better stabilized. 

Anyway, I do agree that the PURPLE acronym can sometimes be misinterpreted, but I think the program is also very helpful to that target group of parents who are at greatest risk of injuring their babies. 

Teresa Pitman


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