No wonder new parents are at sea over the conflicting information on everything from what to eat to the ‘best’ way to give birth
This morass of evidence only gets worse once the baby is born. Most vitamin and food preparation instructions for pregnant people are pretty similar, but parenting advice is wildly varied. If you are going to use bottles to feed your baby at some point, you’re going to have to choose between dozens of similar-looking formula options, all with different claims supported by minimal evidence.
Given all this conflicting evidence, all I can say is that I’m unsurprised at how overwhelmed new parents usually feel. I was overwhelmed looking into the recommendations for a single topic last week – epidurals and their impact on labour. I can only imagine how much more daunting the endless parade of options becomes once your baby is born.
I’m at the start of my parenting journey; I’m not going to sit here and tell you everything you’ve heard is wrong. But as someone who checks scientific statements regularly, I have found it incredibly difficult to get a simple answer to any parenting question I’ve looked into. Even the well-researched problems, like the best place to give birth, seem to have inconclusive answers.
Perhaps there is no one “best” approach to producing offspring that will make their life as healthy and happy as possible. I’m sure when the baby comes, we’ll muddle through the experience just like the generations before us, but I do wish there was a randomised trial that I could look at which would tell us exactly what to do.
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease in Sydney’s west, with a particular focus on the social determinants that control our health
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