Some parents won't, and their babies could die. Life's inequities do not get much worse than this. A study released this week breathes new urgency into the nightmare of sudden infant death syndrome, which claims the lives each year of several thousand seemingly healthy babies. The syndrome is the leading cause of death in babies between 1 month and 1 year. But the campaign has been not been nearly so successful for African Americans, who have been slower to change their habits when tucking babies in, the study found.
Babies still go to sleep on their stomachs and sides.
And that's got to change. Left on our own, we parents can make some unintentional yet devastating mistakes. At some point, every parent I know has felt bewildered, even buffeted, by scientific studies versus family tradition. We were dead wrong. Since 1994, the nation's overall SIDS rate dropped about 40 percent.