omniscient zone - parents who sleep with their kids

I wasn't even allowed in my parents bedroom ... my wife lets the kids sleep in the room all the time, "movie night" etc... My upbringing has this as one of those sacrifice/ choose your battle situations we make as parents 

It's been a thing for a long time ...

Why Parents Choose Co-Sleeping

Even when doctors and leading health organizations strongly advise against co-sleeping, some parents still choose it for perceived benefits like bonding and convenience.

From a practical standpoint, co-sleeping offers convenience: Not only does bed-sharing keep parents physically close by to respond to the baby's needs at night, but the proximity can make it easier for the breastfeeding parent to nurse throughout the night with minimal interruption to their own sleep.

Beyond practicality, parents have an instinctual drive to stay close to their infant, and some parents believe that children derive a greater sense of security and well-being from sleeping near their parents.

"There is an instinctive need for the mother to be close to her baby," says Cynthia Epps, M.S., a certified lactation educator at the Pump Station in Santa Monica, California. There are real benefits to babies being physically close to their parents. "Keeping the baby close, with skin-to-skin contact, calms the baby," says Epps. "And it can cement the emotional bond between mother and child."

There's also a historical and cultural precedent for the practice. For centuries, in many cultures all over the world, children of all ages have shared a bed with their parents.

Some families also co-sleep with older children, when the risks that affect babies are no longer an issue. For instance, Samantha Gadsden, a birth doula in Caerphilly, Wales, shares a bed with her three children, even though the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) shares the AAP's stance against co-sleeping.

https://www.parents.com/baby/sleep/co-sleeping/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-...

We're culturally conditioned to reject these kind of sleeping arrangements, and that was my knee-jerk response when I read the OP, but I have to wonder if maybe this is one of the reasons so many people have problems with intimacy, feel alone a lot of the time, and spend countless billions of dollars on talk therapy and psych meds.

Lot's of families in this world live with their whole extended family. Economics is probably the main reason. but I suppose tradition is also a reason. Among other reasons. I personally like it!

You didn't read the thread, did you, do-little?

I've known quite a few families who sleep in "family beds". It doesn't sound that sweet to me, but my son and his family did it for the first couple of years their kids were alive. They went on to discourage it as the kids got into being toddlers.

Nellie sleeps with me, albeit on top of the covers not under.

Woof?

In my somewhat educated but completely inexperienced opinion, there in no one right or wrong way to these type of situations. What can work well for one will go badly for others. Ultimately it comes down to the individuals involved and the way the parents approach it, including knowing when to move away from it.

Even if it's working at home though, I can see a couple of issues that could complicate things, especially with those in the 8 - 11YO range; if/when the kids peers hear about it they would likely do what kids do when they hear about something different and would mock & ridicule them, and that can get nasty and is never a good thing. And if a teacher or other adults heard about it I could see the family getting a visit from Child Protective Services, and that's never good either.

Ultimately, happy, well-adjusted adults have been raised in the most horrible situations, and messed up, often evil shits are raised in the most "normal" of situations, so it's probably a mistake to put a blanket overall judgement on something like this.

Snowflakes..... Back in my day, from day one we slept in cribs with bars wide enough to get our heads stuck in and painted with the finest lead paint you ever tasted.  And we turned out..... never mind

Go play with your rocks, Alan. You've made (up) your bed; now lie in it.

Ample make this Bed
By Emily Dickinson

Ample make this Bed —
Make this Bed with Awe —
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair.

Be its Mattress straight —
Be its Pillow round —
Let no Sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this Ground —

The beds to big without you

                                      Sting

"The bed's too big;  the frying pan's too wide".

- J. Mitchell

.....And they all rolled over and one fell out and there's eight in the bed and the little one said "Roll over, roll over."

And they all rolled over and one fell out and there's seven in the bed and the little one said "Roll over, roll over."

Kid's song. 

No kids in the bed, we just share our bed with animals 

we did it the 1st year? wife was nursing twins...much easier for all.

i find it strange after year 2...

I want to say first that I'm not a parent, and I don't really hold a firm opinion about this issue, and I'm certainly not defending the practice, but it seems like there's a lot that's going unsaid in this discussion.

> the only "reason" is really to nurse the parents' own emotional insecurity

I think an argument can also be made that those who oppose young children sharing their parent's bed are also coming from a place of emotional insecurity.

What's ill-defined here is the wrong, or harm, that can come from young children sharing their parent's bed. Bss, you said in your OP that "this still mostly creeps me out". How so? I get the sense that this might have something to do with exposing young children to sexuality somehow, but nobody here has come out and said that yet, although Lance did come close with his comment about a teacher or other adults hearing about it and CPS getting involved. So what's the beef?

> I feel it's likely the kids will become increasingly more socially underdeveloped and lacking in their own personal agency as their tender years quickly roll on

How does placing them in a social setting (i.e. sharing their parent's bed), as opposed to placing them in an isolated setting (i.e. their own bed), end up making them more socially underdeveloped? That seems counter-intuitive to me.

As for agency, are you familiar with Jacques Lacan's theory of the Mirror Stage of development? In short, it goes like this. When we're first born, we don't distinguish between ourselves and the rest of the world. We perceive ourselves just as part of one big whole, and breast feeding in particular reinforces this perception. From the child's perspective, mother and child are one.

Then, at an age as young as six months, the child perceives itself as a separate entity. You could say that this is where the "I" is born, and it's this experience from which the processes of attaining agency flow. So again, I'm not seeing how allowing a child beyond a certain age ("talking ten year olds here, dude") to share its parents bed would disrupt the processes of attaining agency. Those are already well underway.

> at some unknown magic age I do think it really blurs that line

It's probably the same magic age where our culture says that opposite sex siblings should no longer share the same bedroom. My observation is that age is usually the approach of puberty.

> make the argument

Lunch first, and I don't want to bogart the discussion here too.

hanging the little buggers out the window always guarantees a good nights sleep

Never underestimate the power of emotional insecurity.

Still working on that argument. In the meantime...

> if there are benefits to this practice, what are they? Where can I learn more about these benefits?

What I've been able to find is there isn't much solid evidence on either side of this very divisive issue.

Here's one meta-analysis that looks legit; their bottom line seems to be that more and better-designed research is needed. Unfortunately, the full report is behind a paywall:

Parent-child bed-sharing: The good, the bad, and the burden of evidence

Abstract

The practice of parent and child sharing a sleeping surface, or 'bed-sharing', is one of the most controversial topics in parenting research. The lay literature has popularized and polarized this debate, offering on one hand claims of dangers, and on the other, of benefits - both physical and psychological - associated with bed-sharing. To address the scientific evidence behind such claims, we systematically reviewed 659 published papers (peer-reviewed, editorial pieces, and commentaries) on the topic of parent-child bed-sharing. Our review offers a narrative walkthrough of the many subdomains of bed-sharing research, including its many correlates (e.g., socioeconomic and cultural factors) and purported risks or outcomes (e.g., sudden infant death syndrome, sleep problems). We found general design limitations and a lack of convincing evidence in the literature, which preclude making strong generalizations. A heat-map based on 98 eligible studies aids the reader to visualize world-wide prevalence in bed-sharing and highlights the need for further research in societies where bed-sharing is the norm. We urge for multiple subfields - anthropology, psychology/psychiatry, and pediatrics - to come together with the aim of understanding infant sleep and how nightly proximity to the parents influences children's social, emotional, and physical development.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27107752/

This one is more of a pop science approach, but the main focus of the piece is the work of an anthropologist named James J. McKenna, who's written numerous scientific articles on children’s sleep, and is the director emeritus of the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, so it leans more toward science than pop, I'd say. The title of the article is a bit misleading because the writer acknowledges right away that this is a controversial topic:

How Cosleeping Can Help You and Your Baby

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_cosleeping_can_help_yo...

As someone who taught preschool and parent Ed for years, I've seen a huge range of parenting styles and sleeping preferences. 
 

the only thing that makes my skin crawl when it comes to parenting  (besides abuse, which is not related to co-sleeping) is when I hear that a parent hired a someone to Ferberize their infant. 
 

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/07/15/730339536/sleep-tra...

https://www.ahaparenting.com/read/case-against-ferber-sleep

Hey Nanc, how you doing? I heard you took a little bounce.

>>>Our review offers a narrative walkthrough of the many subdomains of bed-sharing research, including its many correlates (e.g., socioeconomic and cultural factors)<<<

Oh great. The brainiacs are involved.

Any time I start hearing things like "subdomains", "correlates" and "socioeconomic" my skin starts to crawl.

That's just your emotional insecurity talking, Lance. Never underestimate it, right?

And for a guy who has much to say about so many different things, seems like you're a member of the brainiac club, even though you might be reluctant to publicly admit that.

Sorry to hear you "took a little bounce", Nancy.

I "took a bounce" after tripping up some stairs and falling to the floor hitting my head against a cabinet. Suffered a concussion. Mild, but messed me up for what feels like a long time.

I hope you're doing better than that, and better than you were, Nancy.

Thanks ^
 

I was biking and..

can't discuss the extent of my injuries and pain, but yeah concussions suck. Drunk drivers suck more. He's behind bars.  The child is still in critical condition with brain bleed, and my heart breaks for that family 
 

https://www.nj.com/burlington/2023/07/bicyclist-3-kids-hurt-after-being-...

Damn Judit, watch your step!

And I never underestimate my own personal insecurity, we know each other intimately. I'm just too insecure to trust it.

And by brainiac, I'm referring to the HIGHLY educated intellectuals, of which I could NEVER be confused for.

Don't get me wrong, I have a deep admiration and respect, in many ways awe, for that type of intellect, but it seems that folks at that level can be so certain of/in love with their definitive categorical rhetoric (book smart) that they believe that they KNOW, and in my limited observations and experience, as soon as people start believing that they KNOW is when people stop listening, things start being missed and the trouble starts.

I'm a big fan of edumacation, but I also believe it only goes so far.

Anyway, for me personally, I think one of the reasons many of my posts are so verbose is that I'm not smart enough to articulate my thoughts more succinctly.

But the damned thoughts keep coming, so until I'm banned for taking up too much black screen with too many empty thoughts you're stuck with me.

Now, back to the discussion about children, perhaps the most fascinating subject there is.

^ Hey can everyone please stay healthy and uninjured .. I count on you guys/gals. Thank you in advance for your assistance with this matter.

(I'm currently trying an  East / West combo -- acupuncture/ physical therapy -- and it seems to be working.)

Hope you're feeling better soon Nancy.

Now, back to the original subject/OP...... Bss, do you know either of these particular families well enough to broach the subject directly?

Asking most any parent about how they're raising their kids can become a minefield quickly, but it would be interesting to hear the reasoning from someone actually involved in the practice.

Oh, Nancy, I hope you're healing and beginning to see your way through your injuries. Shit, it sounds scary and horrible.

Alan, good combo.

I still think most of the time that life is beautiful, mysterious and it sucks. Be as well as you can be.

Heal up Judit and Nancy!

 >>>>>but it seems that folks at that level can be so certain of/in love with their definitive categorical rhetoric (book smart) that they believe that they KNOW

I dunno - I worked in science for 25 years and rarely if ever found that attitude among other scientists. The whole point of science is to find out how things work, and it's always a work in progress. If your results can't be reproduced by others, your approach will no longer be supported by the funding agencies and you'll have to come up with a new theory, which in turn will be tested by the experiments of your peers.

Nothing is certain in scientific inquiry.

Maybe "social" science is different - it's usually not very scientific.

One thing is certain, tell a parent your personal opinion on how you think their child should be raised and you'll receive a sharp,  non-scientific response. As it should be.

> Maybe "social" science is different - it's usually not very scientific.

The social sciences (no scare quotes needed) are sometimes referred to as the soft sciences, at least in part because they attempt to measure the unmeasurable. Another way to say it is they seek to fill the messy gaps the hard sciences claim fall outside their domain. Anthropology pretty much straddles that gap. Physical anthropology looks at things like bones and uses scientific tools like radiocarbon dating, while cultural anthropology is concerned with social practices, or the things that people do.

The day we left the hospital with my son, the pediatrician told us to purchase two dozen kites and place them by the front door. As people are leaving and attempting to give you their advice, kindly hand them a kite on their way out.  Some of the best advice I've ever received from a doctor.

I sincerely don't care what others do in their house as long as abuse isn't happening, and I get that some families have different comfort levels, values, etc.I think its something couples have to negotiate.

I have three children, two in high school, one almost done in college, and I've been married for 21 years. I've never been interested in having my kids take over my bedroom or sleep in my bed. In fact, after we had our first born, I was working with a guy who daily lamented about his marriage problems, not helped in part due to his 8-10 year old child sleeping with him and his wife in their bed. He couldn't get the kid to go to his own room. They had long lost any time together, and definitely no intimacy. I definitely didn't want for my house.

So our first really big marriage fight was my wife and I clashing about moving the baby to the crib. We did do it though, and we are both still glad we did. It gave us some boundaries from the rigors of child care and helped our marriage having that space together.

But to everyone else, you do you!
 

yea i am a you do you guy so long as no abuse happens

my son wanted to cuddle with me for years and his father tortured me over it to where it had to end in the way it had been going when he was about 6. after that i was "allowed" to, with a 20 minute timer set, regardless of what we wanted. now i would take every moment of that back and never would have told him no. at 17 now, he drives, has had a longtime gf, and is interning for lockheed fucking martin. cuddling days are so over.

love your kids the way you want, as much as you can, to the extent that they seek it out, is what i say.