[peeky]

Exactly! Beautifully put.

The most insidious thing about a lot of these books is the way they can undermine your confidence as a parent at exactly the time you're most vulnerable. Look at these guarantees, look at all these testimonials, look how we use the word 'science' on every page; if your baby isn't sleeping then you're obviously still doing it wrong, you're a bad parent, it's all your fault.

I'm pretty sure it was The Baby Whisperer that nearly drove my wife to a breakdown before we agreed to bin it.

[mcv]

  >  if your baby isn't sleeping then you're obviously still doing it wrong, you're a bad parent, it's all your fault.

I would strongly hope that parents would draw the conclusion that the book is wrong. With so many contradictory books, some are bound to be wrong, so if a book doesn't work, it must be one of the wrong ones. Try another one to see if it works, or maybe try your own ideas and see if those work.

Parenting is mostly experimentation.