Good Parenting — It’s Up For Discussion — - IELTS Reading Answers & Explanations

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Good Parenting — it's up for discussion —

Raising a baby may, at first, appear to be a highly personal, intimate affair between child and caregiver. In fact, there are often very public battles over every facet of child care, however: Breastfeeding or bottle-feeding? Breastfeeding in public? Toilet training — when and how? Nothing escapes judgment or scrutiny. Restlessness and crying at bedtimes are no different, and three different schools of thought have emerged around how parents should respond to this problem. These have been called extinction, attachment parenting and graduated extinction.

Attachment parenting, a term coined by paediatrician William Sears, suggests that children form powerful emotional bonds with caregivers during early childhood that have implications for their development through life. The basis for this theory was generated within the field of developmental psychology during the 1950s, when researcher John Bowlby proposed that maternal deprivation during infancy could decrease a person's ability to form healthy adult relationships years later. Attachment parenting seeks to avoid this tendency by placing great importance on childhood bonding through the caregiver's holding and cuddling her baby when he is upset. Attachment parenting also suggests that babies' ability to communicate their requirements is limited to crying, and that parents need to learn to understand what different types of crying signal. No crying is considered superfluous — even if the baby merely wants to be comforted rather than fall asleep — caregivers are encouraged to affirm these desires.

The extinction method proposes that, so long as a baby has had adequate calorie intake during the day, he or she can reasonably be expected to maintain nocturnal somnolence. The core postulates of this approach were laid down by Emmett Holt but they have been extrapolated upon by authors such as Warwick Reilly and further adapted recently by Melinda Collins to form the extinction method of today. Caregivers are encouraged to develop a gentle evening routine that involves feeding 45 minutes before bed, bathing, dressing and laying the baby in his sleeping sack, walking out and closing the door and remaining out of the child's presence until dawn even if he cries for extensive periods of time. It is expected that sooner or later children will realise that crying is ineffective, and that they must learn to comfort themselves into a slumber.

Graduated extinction is a modulated version of the extinction method. It postulates that a process of learning needs to be undertaken in order for children to sleep through the night. Richard Ferber, the doctor who popularised this method in the 1980s, emphasised the progressive withdrawal of the caregiver's company with the child in bed as a way to solve infant sleep problems. At first, for example, the caregiver is encouraged to hold and caress the baby until he or she is asleep. Once this routine is established, the caregiver should lie down next to the baby but touch it less and less until the baby can sleep without contact. Eventually the caregiver can sit on a chair nearby, and finally it is hoped that he or she can retreat from the room altogether. The key to this approach is that the caregiver must never capitulate to a child's demands for comfort if he starts to become restless or vocal as the method unfolds over time. Doing so is said to let the baby know that he does not need to learn to sleep through the night without comfort or interaction, and also to lessen the chances that the caregiver will complete the programme, knowing that a 'quick fix' is available. Ferber has since altered his stance to acknowledge the acceptability of co-sleeping and suggests that there is no single method or golden rule for overcoming sleep difficulties.

Each of these systems has its critics. Attachment parenting, for example, is often held accused of being exceedingly strenuous and demanding for caregivers because they must be at the beck and call of their baby's every demand. In doing so it is likely to create tensions between partners who are raising a child together, and between caregivers and their friends or co-workers, none of which is helpful for the overall development of the household. Critics also point out the absence of conclusive research behind the efficacy of attachment parenting.

Many disapprove of the extinction method because, while it may allow a quiet night's sleep for baby and caregiver and anyone else in the household, it is not because the baby has become settled and comfortable but rather for the reason that he has become detached and apathetic. This, it is suggested, can lead to various emotional problems in early adulthood among which might be depression and insecurity. At the mid-point on the spectrum is graduated extinction, which has, therefore, dodged any vociferous attacks. Advocates of attachment argue that there is no need to teach babies to live without soothing affirmation, however, and advocates of extinction suggest that it is better to use a method of going cold turkey—that is, to withdraw soothing affirmation swiftly rather than as a drawn out process.