From: pburch@bcm.tmc.edu (Paula Burch)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Family Bed
Keywords: Family bed, co-family sleeping
Date: 8 Sep 1992 16:07:27 GMT
Reply-To: pburch@bcm.tmc.edu (Paula Burch)
Originator: pburch@roc.mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu


In article <4158@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us>, grace@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:
|>         I just read Tine Thevenin's book The Family Bed which
|>         glowingly describes the practicality, healthfulness, and
|>         psychological benefits of co-family sleeping.

I read that book recently, and I disliked it intensely.

Note that I think that the idea of the family bed is a fine one, and 
that anybody who wants to have their children sleeping with them, 
should. That's what drew me to read the book--I wouldn't have read it 
if I thought it was a crazy idea.

What I disliked was Thevenin's attitude that people who don't practice 
family sleeping are bad parents. The best example of what I hated about 
the book comes at the beginning of the chapter entitled "Marital 
Relations." She poses the perfectly reasonable question that most 
people have when they first hear of the idea of the family bed--"So 
where do you have sex when you're no longer sleeping alone with your 
spouse?"--but then, instead of answering it sensibly (e.g., "in the 
livingroom"), she first launches into a diatribe against America's 
obsession with sex!

Wait a minute--is there something WRONG with wanting to have sex with 
your spouse? Why not just answer the question? Attacking the question 
is not a way to answer it. She doesn't get to any sort of real answer 
until much later in the chapter, and then mostly it's snootily pointing 
out that a mature person can wait until later--next year, if need be, I 
guess. She mentions that sometimes the husband may need to sleep on the 
couch, if he needs to get up early or something (evidently the wife never 
has to!) but that this is a small thing to ask of your husband. What if 
he disagrees, and feels rejected? 

Again and again, the book contains statements that children NEED to 
sleep with their parents, that forcing them to sleep alone is unnatural 
and cruel, etc. I actually believed this stuff before I had my baby. Will 
slept next to me for his first three months. I woke up for his every rustle, 
it seemed. When I moved him into his crib in the other room, he immediately 
slept ten-hour nights without a complaint--and when I wake him up at 7 or 8 
in the morning, he's grinning happily. Hmmm--obviously an abused child! :-)
I expect he'll let me know if it starts to bother him.

There were a few other details that seemed weird to me--Thevenin's 
suggestion in passing that birth control other than "natural family 
planning" is of questionable morality, the impression that none of the 
women mentioned in the book would ever think of working outside the home, 
the fact that almost all of the examples given are of families of five or 
more children, etc. That just shows my own bias, I guess--my beliefs that 
morality actually requires some form of family planning and doesn't rule 
out any of the devices people use for this, that a man can care for 
children as well as a woman so that abilities and desires, not sex roles, 
should determine who takes care of the children, and that small families 
are not inferior to large ones.

Sometimes it seems that the world is full of people who think you don't 
know how to raise your own children. Everyone tells us that we MUST do 
one thing or another--often contradictory things. One source says you 
MUST sleep with your children--another says you MUST not. I think I can 
make my own decisions, thank you. Tell me pros and cons, tell me your 
experiences, tell me what you think, but don't tell me what to do--that's 
what I want to say to all of these authors and authorities.

Paula Burch
pburch@bcm.tmc.edu
Xref: sparky misc.kids:23176 rec.arts.startrek.current:12952