Are you forcing your kid to depression?

A group of researchers is calling on mothers and fathers to abandon parenting methods like letting babies cry it out, excessively structuring their children’s leisure time, and allowing strollers and car seats to do the babysitting –- all strategies that have led to...

A group of researchers is calling on mothers and fathers to abandon parenting methods like letting babies cry it out, excessively structuring their children’s leisure time, and allowing strollers and car seats to do the babysitting –- all strategies that have led to worse life outcomes for today’s youth, they charge.

Presented recently at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Children and Families in the US state of Indiana, the findings run counter to commonly accepted, decades-old parenting practices, which espouse a tough love philosophy, such as letting babies, cry themselves back to sleep.

Darcia Narvaez, a Notre Dame professor of psychology, says, Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace in our culture, such as the use of infant formula, the isolation of infants in their own rooms or the belief that responding too quickly to a fussing baby will spoil it.

The indirect result of these misguided parenting methods, researchers state, is anxiety and depression among children , rising rates of aggressive and delinquent behaviour and decreasing empathy among college students. Instead of being held, infants spend more time in carriers, car seats and strollers, the authors point out, while only 15 per cent mothers breast feed by 12 months.