The Evolution of Modern Feeding Philosophies
BWS - 04
Before the dawn of early childhood theories in the 20th century, parents, guided by an innate wisdom passed through generations, raised their children with the steady hand of common sense. Life unfolded with predictable rhythms, and mothers, in their daily cadence, nursed their babies not only when hunger called but also in harmony with their chores, the rising and setting of the sun, and the pulse of their homes. The routine was not just a part of the mother’s world; it was woven into the fabric of the baby's life, a gentle and consistent rhythm that cradled both of them.
But today, the landscape is cluttered with a jungle of philosophies, each armed with its lexicon and codes to decipher. You might have been told, as you awaited your child’s arrival, to feed on demand and warned against the constraints of schedules, mainly if breastfeeding was your intention. Perhaps terms like "demand schedule" or "self-regulating" danced before your tired eyes, or maybe someone urged you toward the path of "natural feeding," steering you away from the perils of hyper-scheduling. Hyperscheduling, after all, is rigid, and rigidity is frowned upon, at least compared to the looser reins of cry feeding, which itself is surpassed by the attentiveness of cue feeding, a cousin to responsive feeding. And somewhere amidst these ideologies, the often-neglected practice of bottle feeding lingers, the outsider in this intricate dance of feeding styles. I yah, yah!
Let’s see if we can make some sense of all these titles by stepping back to the last century and examining the origin of today’s feeding philosophies.
The Philosophy of Behaviorism: Clock Feeding
Philosophy of Behaviorism: Clock Feeding While the 19th century witnessed a surge in child development theories, it was not until the 20th century that two competing schools of thought captured the public’s attention. The first was the behavioral school, emerging in the early 1900s. Behaviorists emphasize environmental stimuli as the primary influence on human behavior. At the same time, they downplayed the impact of internal factors such as emotions, human will, and human nature. They believed that if you could control the environmental influences, you could engineer the perfect child.
Behaviorism received an unintentional boost with the growing women’s movement of the 1920s, which was symbolized by short hair, short skirts, contraceptives, cigarettes, and bottle feeding, replacing breastfeeding. The latter became possible because of the discovery of an algebraic equation called baby- formula. Since “formula” could be offered anytime, a new feeding practice emerged called schedule feeding or “clock feeding.” A regimented feeding schedule of every 4 hours was considered to be in the child's best interest, and every “good” mother was expected to follow it to the minute. The baby who showed signs of hunger sooner than 4 hours was left to “cry it out” because the clock, not the baby, determined when feedings occurred with little regard to the baby’s immediate needs or the parent’s natural inclination to intervene.(1)
The Philosophy of Neo-primitivism:
Baby-Led Feeding By the mid-1940s, a second theory, an adaptation of Sigmund Freud’s views, started to nudge the rigidity of behaviorism from center stage. A small group of Freud’s 20th-century followers put forth the idea that children are born psychologically damaged as a result of the birthing process. Working within the void of limited science of the day, it was speculated that labor and delivery were so traumatizing to the unborn child that birthing became the wellspring of all future mental imbalances and insecurities. Otto Rank was the Austrian psychoanalyst credited as the first champion of the birth-trauma view (1929).
While his theory did not catch on right away, it eventually inspired the Neo-primitivistic school of child development, supported by Ribble (1944), Aldrich (1945), Frank (1945) and Trainham, Pilafian, and Kraft (1945). The title “Neoprimitivistic” is not name-calling but reflects a specific school of thought that postulates that the separation at birth disrupts the in-utero relational harmony between mother and child. Therefore, the primary goal of early parenting is to re-establish or re-attach the baby, emotionally speaking.
The theory works from a bizarre two-fold assumption that babies in the womb have a perfect “emotional” relationship with their mothers but lose emotional attachment during the birthing process. This leads to a second assumption: that every newborn has a lingering, subconscious desire to return to the security of his mother’s womb. Since that cannot happen physically, the mother is to create and mimic an artificial womb-like environment and maintain it long after birth. All of her efforts are aimed at reversing the psychic shock brought on by the trauma of birth.
From this theory came particular re-attachment protocols. Reaching the baby emotionally requires the day-and-night presence and availability of the mother, who is urged to return to a “primitive style” of nurturing.(2) “The baby should be endlessly cradled, sleep with the mother, and be breastfed well into the second or third year. The child is to be the center of the family universe, where all practices minister to his comfort and minimize his anxiety.”(3)
By 1949, the birth trauma theory, lacking objective verifiable data, was dismissed with considerable skepticism. Around the same time, the school of behaviorism, while still strong, was beginning to lose influence, partly due to an up-and-coming pediatrician whose first book, Baby and Child Care, sold 50 million copies in his lifetime. His name was Dr. Benjamin Spock.
By today’s standards, Dr. Spock was a centrist and best known for advocating common-sense parenting while stressing that babies are better served with a flexible routine than a fixed schedule. He rejected behavioristic one-size-fits-all dictates on everything from strict feeding schedules to potty training. He also dismissed the child-centered extremes of Neo-primitivism, which denied all aspects of structure and routine.(4)
By the 1980s, however, Dr. Spock’s centrist influence began to erode because of social conservatives, who thought his views were too permissive, and social liberals, who declared his parenting advice too controlling. With the polarization of Spock’s views and the decline of his popularity, there came a resurgence of the birth-trauma theory.
While the foundational tenets of the 1940s birth-trauma theory did not change, the modern version took on a new name. Today, it is referred to as Attachment Parenting, which, in truth, has very little connection to the theories of infant attachment. They are linked in name only, not by science. It is essential to note the distinctions here. The theory of infant attachment is the accepted belief that physical touch is a significant necessity for survival.
As authors, we believe that human touch is a baby’s first language, communicating love and security through the portal of the senses. “Touch” is as essential as proper nutrition, and the lack of either will lead to failure to thrive.
Parents should minister to their babies' actual needs and vulnerabilities; however, they should be cautious of any parenting theory that creates extreme or false vulnerabilities. That is when healthy protection turns to unhealthy overprotection, to the long-term detriment of the child. Attachment Parenting advocates of the 1980s may have hijacked the name, but they substituted an old, discarded theory for the science behind actual infant-parent attachment.
Regardless of what it is called today, Attachment Parenting or Re-Attachment Parenting, it is still the same philosophy, drawn from the same birth trauma beliefs and assumptions originally offered by Otto Rank (1929) and expanded on by Dr. Ribble (1944). Just as it was in the past, the modern protocols for Attachment Parenting continue to be very labor intensive, with a strong emphasis on mothers mimicking the womb, first by keeping her baby in her day-and-night presence, the sling by day and co-sleeping with her at night, and second, through constant and continual nursing, which becomes the substitute umbilical cord.
This is why adherents of Attachment Parenting elevate nursing beyond the nutritive value of breastmilk. It is also why a mother can never breastfeed too much, too long or too often, but only too little. Even if it is the third feeding in thirty minutes, the Attachment Parenting mom is acting on the fearful assumption that every cry, if not a signal of hunger, is a potential sign of attachment failure. It all becomes a vicious cycle. Sad to say, the recommended Attachment Parenting protocols required to manufacture a “secure attached child” too often produce the opposite: an emotionally-stressed, high-need, insecure baby and one tired mom. Creating the Bogeyman
After more than 80 years of speculation behind the theory, no conclusive evidence has been provided, nor has a convincing body of research offered that supports the birth-trauma premise on which the modern Attachment Parenting philosophy is based. Meanwhile, the science refuting it continues to grow, especially in light of one fact of nature: There is no life form on earth, simple or complex, human or animal, in which the offspring spontaneously seeks to retreat to the past in search of an old attachment.
Unfortunately, as long as the birthing process is marketed as a “bogeyman” that inflicts trauma on helpless babies, the Attachment Parenting remedy will always have willful adherents. However, is the womb a paradise to which the newborn seeks to return? To justify the extreme tenants of Attachment Parenting, in this modern age of science, proponents continue to present to new and unsuspecting parents the birthing process in horrific, distressing language. They assign to the helpless infant feelings of parental abandonment and betrayal that must be overcome if true attachment is to take place.
In the scientific world, this is known as apophenia (attempting to make a connection where no connections exist). They say a baby is born fully conscious of a traumatic upheaval brought on during birthing, in which he is forcibly thrust from the warmth, protection, and security of the womb and totally exposed to a new world. In this new world, he must exert effort to obtain food, draw his breath, gasp, cough, and struggle to survive.
Does the birthing process actually do all that? How about a more accurate, rational, life-giving perspective that acknowledges that it is only because of the birthing process that a baby is truly liberated from a condition of incredible restraint? A baby in the womb cannot express himself or communicate even the most basic needs. He lived in a world of darkness, in a confined sack where the nutrients that supported life began to mix with his body fluids. It was a place where touch was not permitted, nor was there the opportunity to hear the voices of love, care, and protection. A baby is saved only by the miracle and beauty of the birthing process that truly delivers him from bondage to freedom, where he can participate in a wide range of human sensations. For the first time, he can experience the touch of a loving mother and father and hear the sounds of their voices, as well as the beauty of the songbird. He can experience a thousand rays of color carried on light beams that the womb prevented him from seeing previously. He can laugh, move freely, and discover a world previously closed off to him. All this is made possible by the single passageway carried on the wings of the birthing process.
If birth is actually a moment to remember, then it is a moment to celebrate, not one to return to restraint and bondage. Finally, if trauma is attached to the memory of birthing, by what neurologic function is this achieved? Here is a fact to consider: Newborns have zero memory of birth, let alone the ability to recall anxiety that is specific to a preborn experience. Neuronal development and memory function depend on the brain receiving highly-oxygenated blood from breathing. Breathing cannot begin until the lungs inflate, which occurs after, not during, the birth process. Higher brain centers that control memory are still developing at birth and afterward. Thus, where do the facts lead?
While Behaviorists emphasize outward structure and not the inner person, Neo-primitivists emphasize the inner person at the expense of outward structure. We believe both approaches are extreme and detrimental to healthy parenting outcomes. There is a better way; it is found in the center. Parent-directed feeding is its name.
Notes:
Dr. Rupert Rogers wrote on the problems of breastfeeding during the 1930s and 1940s. He told mothers to be old-fashioned. What did he mean by that? He said to go back to nursing periods arranged as follows: 6:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., Noon, 3:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m., and once when the baby wakes in the night. Although that type of feeding was a schedule, it was not referred to as such. The term “schedule” referred to a nursing technique more than a routine. Mother’s Encyclopedia (New York: The Parents Institute, Inc., 1951), p. 122.
Ribble, Margaret, The Right of Infants (New York: Columbia University Press 1943).
McCandless, Boyd, Children and Adolescents (New York: Holt, Reinehart and Winston, 1961), pp. 13-14.
Spock, Benjamin, M.D., Baby and Child Care (Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster Inc, 1996)