Whispers in the dark disempower parents

It’s said “a picture tells a thousand words’, but sometimes language conveys the better story. In other cases, such as a piece in last weekend’s newspaper called “The Sleep Whisperer”, a good writer can send a bad message.
After a brilliant, if hyped, word picture of an exhausted new mother, the article portrayed parenthood as a nightmare of epic proportions. Even the first sentence - “At 3am, no-one can hear you scream”, was a take on the tagline from the horror movie, “Alien” - “In space no-one can hear you scream”.
After sleeping, or not sleeping, for weeks “on a crappy mattress on the floor of her room so my husband could sleep undisturbed in our giant bed”, our new mother was seduced by tales of a woman with “magic powers to make babies sleep through the night” when they reached six months old. And unlike parenting services such as Tresillian, the baby-whisperer did all the work, and in the comfort of your own home.
It worked a treat, so why did the piece leave me so angry?
My first though was jealousy; this couple had dodged emotional responsibility sipping Chardonnay in the lounge-room whereas I’d done the hands-on version.
On reflection however, what upset me was that the article disempowered parents. Many new parents struggle with a baby disinclined to sleep, but the last thing they need is a magician.
As my wise cousin Julie taught me, except for in exceptional circumstances, almost any committed couple can teach their infants to go to sleep unaided.
Choose a weekend when no-one’s working, put the baby to bed, make a strong cuppa and put Rage on the TV”, the mother of four wonderful children advised. “Check them after one song, then two, then three … you’ll get the idea”.
She was entirely correct, and it came much cheaper than baby-whisperers at $20 to $35 an hour.
GW 2007;3-4 March