In 2023, I had the wonderful honour of becoming a mother. It didn’t take long to realise that the world – particularly the online world – is full of weird parenting advice and claims, most of them claiming to be “THE ONE” correct way of doing, but rarely could I trace any of these claims to any substantial evidence or science. Thus with the birth of my first child, my birth as a “science mama” soon followed. Somehow, amidst the sleep deprivation, the confusion and bewildering new challenges, I never ran out of energy or capacity for the one thing I love: reading through scientific research. So of course whenever I found or heard yet another strange or intriguing claim about babies or parenting, I turned not to Google but to PubMed.
I often share my findings, thoughts and conclusions with friends and fellow mamas, but I thought I might as well share them more widely, in case anyone else out there may find them useful.
I do not claim to have found “THE Answer” either – if anything, the research we have so far most consistently shows that reality is not as black-and-white as social media would like to make it seem, but rather full of nuance and in most cases the most appropriate answer to any parenting question seems to be “it depends”. So take what you read with your own grain of salt, and decide for yourself whether you agree or not with me. Either is fine.
A link to the blog posts will appear here once I publish some.