08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Science Protects us from Child-Rearing Pseudoscience
We want certainty, and that leaves us open to fraud. Mothers used to lie awake listening to their babies scream because the experts said not to pick the baby up or to feed "off schedule." They might well have felt that bloodletting would have been preferable. One benefit of knowing the science is a kind of protective skepticism. It should make us deeply suspicious of any enterprise that offers a formula for making babies smarter or teaching them more, from flash cards to Mozart tapes to Bet...Like Baby Einstein videos and doctors who say the baby should be allowed to cry alone all night.