[naasking]

> What are the odds that the rest of the world and entire history of humankind were mistaken the whole time, until some behaviorists came along and figured it all out in the last century?

There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery.

Certainly the odds aren't good that this is true of everything humans do, but the odds that some of the things we do fall into this category is 100%.

Edit: also, don't be so judgmental. Behaviours are environmental adaptions. In the Western world, mothers typically work 9-5 like men, so of course in cultures where women don't have this constraint they'd be shocked at our behaviours. Humans are adaptable however, and constantly coddling your fearful infant made sense when there were dangers everywhere. In our society's we're pretty safe in historical terms, so it could just be that babies cry because they're instinctively afraid until they learn they're safe when nothing happens to them after a few nights, and then it stops. This actually seems to happen in a lot of cry-it-out cases.

[kaitai]

There is way too much romanticization of a false past here in this larger HN discussion. Yeah, sleep patterns were different, and many people slept with their infants. Infant mortality was also higher, as was maternal mortality, and corporal punishment was common. Sleep-deprived women with piles of children were not spending loving moments staring into their babies' eyes; they were smacking the slightly older children on the back of the head to hurry up and take the chicken feed out and slop the pigs. From my own family histories, I know that babies were often ignored, because at some point having a 1/3 of your babies die means you just don't invest very much emotional energy in them anymore. Very young children were tied to furniture to keep them out of trouble. By age four, some were at work (although the average age to start work in Victorian England was about 10, and the Factory Act came into force to regulate labor conditions for 9-13 year olds). Wet nurses were common, and in parts of England and France in the 1780s for instance it was extraordinarily common to simply ship your baby out to the country so you could work or maintain your aristocratic figure (see references at https://www.geriwalton.com/breastfeeding-or-nursing-with-wet... for instance).

For my own part, we did some version of sleep training (checking every 5 min until crying stopped). This was overall extraordinarily effective. The reassurance that we're not leaving, we're coming back -- quite important. But as important: the discovery that the child in question doesn't like rocking, bouncing, white noise, or any of the other interventions that are billed as crucial. Leave that kid alone for 4-12 minutes? Asleep. Rock/bounce/white noise? Awake for hours. Why torture the child to satisfy someone else's interventionist idea of good parenting?

Every kid is different. And not every cry needs intervention. This kid cried every time a fart came. At some point you just need to learn the world won't end if you fart, and that is simply gained by experience, not mom or dad rushing to reassure and making a big deal of every fart.

[unity1001]

> There is way too much romanticization of a false past here in this larger HN discussion

Some stuff is evolutionary. Co-sleeping is seen in all mammal species. And its an important part of the group sentiment, including the social support it brings. The lack of it causes anxiety in mammal species. Even domestic cats prefer to take care of their young in groups of mothers until the kittens grow up.

> This kid cried every time a fart came. At some point you just need to learn...

...that those farts have been causing pain in his abdomen or scrotum. Its amazing how it did not occur to you and instead you let the kid to just 'go through' it.

> England and France in the 1780s for instance it was extraordinarily common to simply ship your baby out to the country so you could work or maintain your aristocratic figure

Inbreeding, negligent and sociopathic aristocrats are never good examples for anything related to the basic tenets of human civilization. Less, parenting. Sheeesh. If your parenting morning star is murderous 18th century aristocrats who starved their people to be able to live in extravaganza with their powdered wigs...

[naasking]

Invoking evolutionary biology is not the strong point you seem to think it is. Humans have plenty of characteristics and behaviours that are not present in other mammals, even characteristics that seem to be shared among all other mammals. Our shared heritage with cats didn't lead to our sophisticated language or take us to the moon.

Furthermore, if letting babies cry it out were truly as atrocious a practice as you seem to imply, the signal in the data would be so strong it would be impossible to ignore. The fact that we don't see such an indisputable signal should make you question your assumptions.

> ...that those farts have been causing pain in his abdomen or scrotum. Its amazing how it did not occur to you and instead you let the kid to just 'go through' it.

You seem to be implying that this was somehow wrong. Human newborns need to experience a range of sensations and discomfort to learn how to distinguish what counts as actual pain from mere discomfort. This still happens even into adulthood. Exercise is borderline painful when you're out of shape and then can become pleasurable as your fitness improves. Your brain is constantly adapting and recalibrating.

[unity1001]

> Invoking evolutionary biology is not the strong point you seem to think it is. Humans have plenty of characteristics and behaviours that are not present in other mammals

Yes, but co-sleeping, rearing children, co-habitation, touching, grooming, infants depending on their parents are present in all mammal species. More sophisticated and derived behaviors may not be. But these, are. And the repression of some of these in modern humans causes considerable psychological distress and anxiety.

[naasking]

> And the repression of some of these in modern humans causes considerable psychological distress and anxiety.

Literally pure conjecture, as there's no conclusive evidence of this claim, which is the whole point of this article.

Furthermore, the only change we're discussing is eliminating a specific type of co-sleeping. All of the other behaviours common to all mammals remain the same. The odds of this one change being significantly damaging are small, and considering we see no strong signal in the data we do have, I don't see this claim standing the test of time.

[shaklee3]

you made a lot of claims with no evidence. please cite where it creates anxiety.

[unity1001]

Have you not read the rest of the thread? There are a ton of comments in that direction, but hey:

https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcpp....

> In their recent paper published in JCPP, Bilgin and Wolke (2020a) argue that leaving an infant to ‘cry it out’, rather than responding to the child’s cries, had no adverse effects on mother–infant attachment at 18 months. This finding opposes evidence across a wide range of scientific fields. Here, we outline several concerns with the article and argue against some of the authors’ strong claims, which have already gained media attention, including a report on the NHS website. We suggest that the authors’ conclusions should be considered one piece of a larger scientific whole, where ‘cry it out’ seems, overall, to be of detriment to both attachment and development. Crucially, we are concerned that this study has issues regarding power and other analytical decisions. More generally, we fear that the authors have overstated their findings and we hope that members of the public do not alter their parenting behaviours in line with such claims without further research into this controversial topic.

[shaklee3]

ah, yes! link to a group of people who didn't like the outcome of a study, so they wrote about it with links to older studies that the more comprehensive one already addressed. of course, said people didn't bother to do their own study, but needed to get it off their chests how mad it makes them that the newer/more data-driven studies go against their instincts.

[unity1001]

> ah, yes! link to a group of people who didn't like the outcome of a study, so they wrote about it

That study criticizes the methods and samples of the study you trust in. Its something fundamental, not 'opinionated'.

> data-driven studies go against their instincts.

What part of a 40 or 200 sample set is 'data driven'. How many of those children are 40 years old. How many of them have passed through the chaos of teenage years and now experiencing their first problems in work life, social relationships or relationship with their spouse.

...

Its amazing how people immediately forget any evolutionary biology or behavioral science lessons they have taken during the course of their lives when it involves self-interest. Simple behaviors that entirety of mammal species rely on as evolutionary behaviors for survival are just 'maladaptive practices' when self-interest is involved.

...

Strong personal interest seem to cause strong bias in this topic. I understand the need for the parents who use such destructive practices to be able to get some sleep while they are raising infants in this modern society that does not leave any time for childrearing. But neither anyone like me empathizing with it nor the circumstances of modern society can negate the evolutionary behaviors and their effects. The parents who are in such a situation must find another way to address the situation than relying on what increasingly seems to be anti-humane advocacy.

[jjulius]

Thank you for this perspective.

[bawolff]

> There are many cases where all of humanity has been doing something that we only recently decided was wrong. For instance, slavery.

Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

[acdha]

> Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

People said it was the natural order of things - similar to how men owning women or children was divinely approved, and if you read about “the curse of Ham” you can see many variations of the excuses offered that it was just due to ancestral sin - and during the colonial era that exact argument was used to the general effect that slavery provided heathens with a chance to adopt Christianity and be saved.

The reason the Southern Baptists exist as a separate denomination is because they split off from the main Baptist community in support of slavery, only recanting in 1995!, and while that’s generally accepted as being significantly motivated by the massive financial impacts it relied on those rationalizations (it’s biblical, we’re improving people who would otherwise be doomed to a primitive existence without the chance of salvation). These days people know not to say slavery was good but you can still find conservatives saying colonialism was a net win for many countries.

There’s considerably more about this dark part of our history here:

https://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp

[dragonwriter]

> Not really comparable because we decided it was morally wrong, not that we were wrong about its effects. Its not like humanity used to think slavery was good for the slave.

People still argue that slavery (in particularly, chattel slavery of Blacks in North America) was good for the slave, and the argument was even more common when slavery was legal but under active debate.

[neaden]

They absolutely claimed it was good for the enslaved person as part of justifying it.

[thewhitetulip]

Dude, only Europeans had slaves right? It is not like the entire world had them.

In fact the word slave originates from Slavic people.. I don't think Asians ever had slaves in the history.

The OP comment said " what are the odds that the rest of the world was wrong for a millenium and Americans figured it out in 100yrs"

Edit: damn. non European had slaves. Didn't know it before. Wasn't definitely part of the history taught in schools though.

OP is right though. Throughout Entire history people had slaves until it was abolished.

[alt227]

There seems to be this narrative that Euopeans went to Africa and stole all the people and forced them into slavery. This is not true at all. Europeans traded with African leaders who sold their slaves to the Europeans. Not saying what they traded was a fair price or was justified, but the africans had the slaves first. The Europeans bought and distributed them round the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

[AnimalMuppet]

Is this parody/sarcasm/troll?

At a minimum, Africans and Muslims had slaves. Pretty sure the Incas and Aztecs did. I lack data on Asia.

[Xixi]

It's not hard to find sources about slavery in Asia.

"Slavery in Korea formally existed from antiquity up to the 20th century. Slavery was very important in medieval Korea; it was a major institution. [...] The Korean "nobi" system of slavery peaked between the 15th and 17th centuries and then declined in the 18th and 19th centuries." [1]

"The Mongol Empire (1206-1368) had a tremendous impact on slavery across Eurasia. While slaves played a minor role in pre-Imperial Mongolia, the Mongols saw people as a resource, to be distributed among the imperial family and used for imperial needs, like material goods. This view created a whole spectrum of dependency running from free men to full slaves." [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Korea

[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-his...

[thewhitetulip]

Mongols weren't exactly 20th and 21st century were they?

I had no idea about Korean slavery that existed till the 20th century. Why aren't these parts included in history curriculum?

[Xixi]

I'm not sure what you mean, but I don't think many countries still had legal slavery going into the 20th century, outside of the Arab peninsula.

In Korea it was officially abolished in 1894 (although it took a few decades to eradicate). In my own country, France, slavery was abolished in 1794 (in Europe) and in 1848 (in all colonies and oversea territories). I think it's the general timeline for western Europe, first half of the 19th century. So not exactly 20th or 21st century either.

Of course, slavery itself (especially related to prostitution) is still ongoing pretty much everywhere, but it's not legal. And then there's war: forced work (Germany and Japan during WWII), and arguably conscription could count as a form of slavery too...

I'm pretty sure I learned about it at school in France, although of course not each country individually. Not sure about your specific country and history curriculum.

[2000UltraDeluxe]

It sounds like the authorities where you live should have a look at not just the history curriculum but the rest as well. Slavery is very much a contemporary issue and it's been around, globally, since times that predate written history.

[thewhitetulip]

To be honest, history in India (for school or college) ends at 1947 i.e. year of independence

[thewhitetulip]

Isn't it telling that you have to go back to Incas and Aztechs to find examples of slavery in non European countries?

The most recent form of slavery was conducted by Europeans and then as the century progressed they gave it up

[AnimalMuppet]

You can still find slavery in Africa and the Middle East. So, no, not telling at all.

[thewhitetulip]

That is fucked up.

also Inca and Aztechs were from south america right?

there is also a new form of slavery currently active in the US where immigrants are brought to work and their passports are kept with their "employer" until xyz condition.

so slavery still exists but it is no longer a government policy as it used to be in US

I don't understand how, in the 21st century can we have slaves or bonded labourers. Apalling

[lazide]

People now are the same as people then, just different fashions and widgets.

The 'new form' of slavery you're describing sounds like indentured servitude. Definitely not new to the US (though now illegal)! Benjamin Franklin was indentured for 2 years when he was a teenager to his older brother, and frankly was not a fan of the practice.

[k2enemy]

I'm not sure if this was sarcastic? But in case not, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Asia