Science-based parenting: finding your way

by Anya Dunham, PhD

Science-based parenting can help us avoid conflicting parenting trends  - and find the answers that work best for our babies and our families.

(This is an expanded version of one of the chapters of my book, Baby Ecology.)

When I think back to my first year as a mom, I remember feeling love beyond any experience I had yet had. I was swept off my feet by my fierce need to nurture and protect our baby, by her uniqueness and completeness… but also by worry and doubt. I was ready for the sleepless nights, but not for how huge the responsibility for a tiny person would feel.

I wanted to become the best parent I could be, so I read dozens of parenting books and browsed through countless online resources, soon finding myself in a sea of conflicting trends. “Babywear” but “don’t restrict free movement”, “sleep train” but “never leave your baby to cry”, “no purees, no more mush” but “start solids between 4 and 6 months”… The advice was confusing and not helpful.

The science-based parenting approach

By the time my first baby was born I had a PhD in biology and had spent 12 years doing biological research. So I went to the original sources of knowledge about babies: the peer-reviewed scientific studies. I carefully read over 800 papers on infant development, sleep, and feeding, and separated well-substantiated results from preliminary findings and speculations.

It became clear why there are so many conflicting approaches to baby care.

Science has accumulated a vast amount of knowledge on child development and the ways babies are raised around the world. But many scientific studies are designed to answer very specific questions in very specific settings. Sometimes their findings are not supposed to be applied beyond a particular group, situation, or stage of development. Other times the findings are very preliminary and cannot and should not be considered ‘calls to action’.

All too often, scientific findings get misinterpreted in the media and then amplified by parenting trendsetters who take away select messages that fit their particular philosophy. They create strict parenting “dos” and “don’ts” that presume there is only one correct way. They offer parenting techniques aimed at a particular stage or challenge that often contradict what other experts promote in their own strict guidelines. Many techniques come with a sense of pressure: “Do this… or your baby will not thrive.”

Different cultures use different approaches they consider natural, and each family creates its own set of unique baby care practices. I imagine these family practices as dots; some are quite far apart and some are closer together, but none are exactly the same:

The problem is, no parenting trend works perfectly for everyone. Parents who choose to carefully follow one particular trend often discover that not all the recommended techniques work for their baby and family.

If we add parenting trends to our map of family practices, they would look like this; some work for some families, but none work for all:

But what if we shift our perspective? What if we saw raising a baby not as a series of parenting techniques, but as an opportunity to nurture a whole person? What if we look at it from the babies’ perspective? What do babies really, truly need?

With this new frame of mind, I returned to the research, but this time went a step further. My scientific expertise is in ecology, a branch of biology that studies how living organisms relate to one another and interact with their environments. More specifically, I study habitats: spaces and environments that support life. And so I began to think about baby-care questions from an ecological perspective.

Baby ecology

Each baby has fundamental abilities and needs universal to all human babies, as well as his own unique traits. His environment consists of the physical spaces he lives in, the care he receives, and his interactions with the people in his life: everything that shapes his day-to-day experiences. In developmental psychology this immediate environment is called the microsystem.^{1, 2}

I critically examined the scientific studies once again, but this time through the lens of ecology: baby ecology. I set out to find answers to these questions:

• What are the fundamental, universal needs of all human babies?
• What elements in babies’ environment help meet these needs?
• What circumstances make meeting these needs difficult?

After I analyzed the scientific research from this new angle, it became very clear that there will never be one perfect parenting trend or a set of 'best' parenting techniques; there is not just one “right” way to raise a baby.

However, there is a biologically optimal range that supports every baby’s unfolding natural abilities. I called this range is the Optimal Nurturing Environment, or “the ONE” for short.

Upon first glance, this might sound like “just another parenting trend”. But please hear me out.

The ONE is based on human biology and is universal: it is the same for all human babies. To find it, we need to carefully consider and include studies that are relevant to all babies, and exclude studies that are methodologically flawed, too narrow, or too specific.

And the ONE is really quite wide when it comes to baby care.

But it’s also easy to find yourself outside its range. In the picture above, some family practices fit within the ONE, but others do not; parenting trends sometimes straddle or even fall completely outside it.

Sometimes what falls outside is major (for example, scheduled feedings for even young babies promoted by Babywise, despite science clearly showing the benefits of feeding on demand).

Other times – and thankfully I find this more common than my first example – it’s specific techniques that may fall outside the ONE, techniques that may or may not be integral to the approach itself.

I believe the science-based parenting approach, and the ONE approach, can be applied to the whole-picture questions like the spaces and experiences we create for our babies; big questions like baby sleep; and smaller, specific questions, like screen time. 

Your ONE is at the intersection of best available science and your individual, unique baby’s needs and your family’s values and circumstances.

I hope you feel empowered and supported in finding it.

Hi! My name is Dr. Anya Dunham. I'm a scientist with a PhD in Biology, an award-winning author, and a mom to three young kids. Here and in my book, Baby Ecology, I analyze the research on baby's first year to find the optimal nurturing environment — the (usually wide) range of good options — to help you choose what works best for your baby and your family. Let's find the answers to  your new parent questions that are too complex to google. 

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