by Shayna Fernandes
There is so much involved with becoming a new parent. Getting through the nine months of pregnancy is just the start; once that little bundle of joy is placed in your arms you will be faced with decisions and bombarded with multitudes of advice and parenting tips. Friends and family will share experiences and recommend the best parenting book; it will not matter if their youngest child has been out of knee britches for a couple of decades - when it comes to parenting they believe their methods to be tried and true. Things change though, and parenting beliefs and styles are not immune to that. Most of the parenting books are really just re-workings of parenting styles gone by and then there are others which have no real connection to any other parenting beliefs - one of those books is Babywise by Gary Ezzo.
Ezzo spends some time in his book trying to claim that all other parenting styles are poor choices, purporting his parenting program to be raising children the "Godly" way and then claiming his system must be right because all his readers have kids who sleep through the night and behave perfectly. I have to admit his claims and promises are appealing, but as soon as I opened the book and read the methods to achieve his goals I started to see some real problems with his theories.
First, Ezzo has little to no understanding of Attachment Parenting (AP) - yet he repeatedly refers to that style of parenting as harmful and stops just shy of calling it abusive. He classifies all AP families as parents who put the baby first above all other things; hinting that the husband/wife relationship is put very low on the priority list and that the families universe now revolves around this little infant. Apparently all AP families do is shove a breast in a babies/toddlers mouth at the first whimper and become slaves to our self-created demanding, high-need children. Ezzo fails to convince me that all babies are cut from the same cloth and come out ready and willing to be fashioned by his Parent Directed Feeding (PDF) system. I have two boys and they could not be any different personality wise; from the moment my youngest was born I quickly learned just how different two children could be. The funny thing is I really did nothing differently and hands down my youngest is a much more demanding child. I demand-fed them both and by that I mean that I did not watch the clock and when they cried if nothing else satisfied them then they nursed. I held them both quite a bit; with my oldest because I was fascinated with this tiny human my husband and I had created, with my second because I wanted to make sure I spent lots of time with him as well, but mostly because he truly needed to be held. He was a much more fragile (for lack of a better word) child; loud noises bothered him, he was a light sleeper, hated the care and actually preferred to sleep in his own space for the first few months because normal family noises (daddy's snoring) bothered him. He had an ever present need to suck so I used a pacifier with him, mostly to calm him in the car, but also at night as he would almost constantly suck on something while he slept. I cannot help but wonder what Ezzo's PDF and rigid rules about appropriate behavior, sleep and playpen time would have done to the sensitive, sweet spirit of my youngest child; I do not dare imagine the adverse effect.
My second problem with Ezzo is his PDF system. He is not a doctor, as far as I am aware has never lactated and I have to truly wonder if his wife actually ever breastfed any of their children as his understanding of Breastfeeding and how the body produces milk seems to be more guesswork than any real research based understanding. Lactation Consultant's will talk supply and demand and encourage frequent nursing sessions to help build/establish/maintain a good milk supply. Ezzo tries to claim that longer sessions at the breast, fewer times a day is better for milk production and that frequent nursings are actually harmful to the supply and the child. I will admit I have never had much of a supply issue (hmm, I wonder why) but the few people I have known, who had supply problems, were advised to pump/nurse more frequently for 10 to 15 minute periods than to nurse only a few times a day for long periods of time. While Ezzo does allow for a slight deviation in his PDF, if you feel you have supply issues, he really contradicts himself and mentions things like supplementing with formula and being careful to alter your schedule no more than a couple times a week or else you will undo any good you have done with your schedule; which begs the question if all infants really are meant to be on his PDF system and thrive better under it, why would a couple lapses in that schedule completely ruin it altogether? Personally anything you have to keep such constant vigilance over sounds like more work for the parent and rings more of parents being trained than babies.
The last issue is Ezzo's complete disregard for the mothering instinct. Letting a small infant, or even older baby, cry for any amount of time is difficult, almost painful; his system has a mother doing that for long periods of time, sometimes 45 minutes, although he claims they will only do that for a few days. He expects you to ignore it and basically tune it out. Being able to distinguish hunger cries and pain cries takes a certain amount of attachment between the mother and baby, by working to tune a child's crying out from a very early age how can one expect to be able to establish that trusting bond between child and mother? Really, the PDF system is rote parenting, babies follow a schedule you set for them and if their behavior deviates, and they want to alter it, TOUGH, your the parent and this the schedule they must follow; basically because you are ill-equipped to handle interpreting what they truly may need; it is wake time they cannot possibly be tired or it is sleep time they cannot possibly be hungry, your schedule is always right and they need to submit to that. I'm sorry, I am an adult with a pretty good control over my body and about 33 years of a schedule and guess what, sometimes I am hungry sooner than I should be, tired before bedtime and awake when I should be sleeping; why then can we not grant this for infants/babies?
I cannot help but see the irony in Ezzo's attachment parenting bashing. The many things he believes are the downfalls of attachment parenting: high-needs children, over-tired parents, etc. are all the things I imagine happen with his system; and there are some stories available out there that support my beliefs. I have to admit that being an attached parent may seem to require more one-on-one parenting, but I feel that is an integral part of loving, cherishing and growing with my children; rather than constantly battling the badness, that Ezzo believes is in all children, and being an ever vigilant disciplinarian.
I encourage you to read some of the following information as well:
Read a story from one of our own members!
The H Family's story.
The Hsieh's open letter.
And the countless other voices of Ezzo parent's.
Adventures in Ezzoland by Frank York - a former employee.
Do a search on lactnet for Ezzo - there is a great deal in the Lactation Consultant community about the problems this feeding program causes.
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