On Becoming Baby Wise

Religious

In the late 1960s, Gary Ezzo studied at Mohawk Valley Community College in New York state, but he did not earn a degree. In 1983, Ezzo enrolled full-time at Talbot School of Theology in a program aimed at giving a Master of Arts degree in Christian ministry to people who did not hold a lower degree, but had been active in ministry for two years. In 1984, Ezzo and his wife Anne Marie Ezzo began teaching parenting classes at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California; a 10,000-member megachurch for evangelical Christians. Anne Marie Ezzo was raising two children at the time and for a short while trained as a nurse in a hospital pediatric unit.

In 1984, Anne Marie Ezzo wrote a four-page paper titled "Parent Controlled Feeding". In 1985, Ezzo received his Master of Arts degree from Talbot; the degree emphasized Christian Education. Subsequently, the Ezzos continued to research early parenting and with five other couples formed Growing Families International (GFI), beginning as a non-profit in 1987 and becoming a for-profit in 1989. Based on the earlier paper the Ezzos wrote a Christian parenting guide for GFI: Preparation for Parenting: Bringing God's Order to Your Baby's Day and Restful Sleep to Your Baby's Night. The book was published in 1990. Grace Community Church was initially supportive of the Ezzos and their parenting ministry but in 1997 after four years of concerned discussion, the church reversed its official position, criticizing the Ezzos for creating a divisive atmosphere between parents who followed the book's practices and those who favored demand feeding for infants, sleeping with their infants, and sling-type carriers for babies. The church elders banned the GFI books for "stifling the mother's desire to comfort her children", for ascribing Biblical qualities to the concept of scheduled feeding, and for failing to address the church's concerns regarding theological issues such as human depravity (the belief that all people are born in slavery to the service of sin) and regeneration (the belief that people can experience spiritual rebirth in Christ). The Ezzos left the church along with a few sympathetic families.

The infant-rearing research the Ezzos conducted was performed by GFI and not published or subject to peer review. In training the infant to follow the book's recommended eating and sleeping schedule, it was expected that at certain times the infant would be left alone to cry when hungry or wakeful. The book justified the act of leaving a baby to cry alone by comparing that choice to the crucifixion of Jesus: "Praise God that the Father did not intervene when His Son cried out on the cross." The Ezzos wrote that leaving the infant "crying for 15, 20, even 30 minutes is not going to hurt your baby physically or emotionally." To counter the book's conclusions, Laura Bassi Zaff, PhD, an expert in childhood cognitive development, wrote that careful research has shown that leaving a baby crying may result in emotional harm, perhaps manifesting as "attachment disorder, or anxiety disorder, or crippling problems with self esteem and interpersonal relationships".

Secular

To create a secular version of the book, Gary Ezzo partnered with Robert Bucknam, a pediatrician from Louisville, Colorado, to write On Becoming Babywise: More Than a Survival Guide which appeared in 1993. Ezzo and Bucknam wrote a new edition published in 1995: On Becoming Baby Wise: Learn How Over 100,000 Babies Were Trained to Sleep Through the Night the Natural Way—this edition used the single word "Babywise", later split into two words: "Baby Wise". Further editions of the book were published in 1998, 2001 and 2007. Changes in the later editions include removing the assertion that the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is not heightened by placing the baby to sleep on its belly, and removing the notion that feeding the baby whenever it appears hungry will give the mother "an abnormal hormonal condition" which could lead to postpartum depression.

Summary

Baby Wise describes an infant management plan built around feed/play/sleep cycles. The authors term their approach to feeding "parent-directed feeding", or PDF:

Our conviction is that a baby should be fed when he or she signals readiness. With PDF, a mother feeds her baby when the baby is hungry, but she takes advantage of the first few weeks of life to guide the baby’s hunger patterns by a basic routine. This is cooperative parenting.

The book includes instructions for the care of babies from birth through six months. It primarily covers infant sleep and feeding practices, and emphasizes parental control of infant training. The infant is presented not as the defining center of the household but as a "welcome addition", subject to larger household order. The material presented in Baby Wise is not radical or new, it is simply a re-articulation of various practical methods which are reminiscent of parenting styles advocated by some Evangelical as well as secular (such as Tracy Hogg in the Secrets of the Baby Whisperer book, who deems the routine E.A.S.Y. = Eat,Activity,Sleep,You) child-rearing advisors.

Ezzo and Bucknam describe their stance as a middle ground between feeding the baby on demand (when the baby indicates hunger) and feeding based on a strict clock schedule. In contrast to advice given by popular pediatrician William "Dr. Bill" Sears, the Baby Wise authors do not condone co-sleeping; Ezzo wrote, "The most serious sleep problems we've encountered are associated with parents who sleep with their babies."

The sleep advice given by Baby Wise is similar to Richard Ferber's advice given in his popular book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. The Ferber method of getting a baby to sleep includes putting the baby to bed when awake; the same as Baby Wise. The baby is expected to learn how to fall asleep alone. Both methods warn the parents against using aids such as a pacifier to ease the baby into sleep, and both methods describe putting the infant to sleep without rocking, cuddling or nursing applied for the sole purpose of putting child to sleep. "Crying it out" is expected from the infant during the early training periods, until about eight weeks of age.

A foundation of the book is that "great marriages produce great parents." Ezzo and Bucknam recommend that the new parents continue to schedule dates with each other and have friends over.

Buyers of the book include mothers wearied by the demands of attachment parenting, in search of more freedom and time for themselves including the pursuit of careers and other interests. The book promises that following its plan "will not leave mom ragged at the end of the day nor in bondage to her child. Nor will Dad be excluded from his duties."

Criticism

Baby Wise has been criticized by mainstream health care professionals for giving dangerously wrong information regarding infant growth, feeding, sleep and development. Critics include, for example, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, MD, FAAP, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Medical School, developer of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale; and Arnold Tanis, MD, FAAP, Past President, Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Baby Wise program has been associated with infantile failure to thrive, dehydration, malnutrition, problems with milk supply in breastfeeding mothers, and involuntary early weaning.

Ferber method founder Richard Ferber, MD, Director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children's Hospital Boston, concurs with Baby Wise regarding some of its sleep advice, but he warns against expecting too much. Baby Wise predicts that the 8-week-old child will be sleeping 7 to 8 hours in a row at night, and the 13-week-old child increasing the nighttime sleep period to as much as 11 hours. Ferber said, "Parents shouldn't expect babies to sleep that long that early, although a very few will on their own". Ferber says that the book may frustrate parents of babies that are not sleeping so much; the parents may wonder what is wrong with the infant. Ferber says that if a baby sleeps through the night, the parents may actually need to wake it for feeding.

In 1998, "Dr. Bill" Sears, evangelical author, pediatrician, and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, best known as the foremost proponent of attachment parenting, said of the Baby Wise book, "People began calling me about the stuff in this book several years ago, but I basically ignored it, thinking that it was so far out that it would just die out." Sears regretted not speaking out earlier against Baby Wise. He said about the book that it was "probably the most dangerous program of teaching about babies and children that I have seen in my 25 years of being a pediatrician."

After noticing the controversy surrounding the book and investigating complaints about the medical advice it gives to new parents, Multnomah Books stopped publishing the text in September 2001. They returned the book rights to GFI. Subsequent printings have been produced by Parent-Wise Solutions, an imprint formed by the Ezzos to publish their books.

Many of Ezzo's former Christian allies turned into detractors of Baby Wise. Others hold different positions. Evangelical Christian author James Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family ministry, commented on the controversial book, saying "I've never attacked it, but I don't endorse it... I'm not out campaigning against the Ezzos; I'm just not their greatest fan."