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The Great American Myth:
Young Babies Can Be Spoiled
Hide not thine ear to my cry.
Lamentations 3:56
There are at least two things all parents know for sure:
1. There are a lot of spoiled kids out there.

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2. You don’t want your child to become one of them.
We all want to raise respectful children, and some experts warn us
that being too attentive to our baby’s cries will accidentally teach them
to be manipulative. Can promptly answering your newborn’s cries with
holding, rocking, and sucking start a bad habit? Can cuddling your baby
backfire on you?
Fortunately, the answers to these two questions are … no and no. It’s
impossible to spoil your baby during the first four months of life.
Remember, he experienced a dramatic drop-off in holding time as soon
as he was born. One mother told me, “I imagine new babies feel like
someone who enters a detox program and has to go cold turkey from
snuggling. No wonder they cry!”
Today’s mothers and fathers aren’t the only ones who have worried
about turning their children into whining brats. In the early twentieth
century, American parents were told not to mollycoddle their babies for
fear of turning them into undisciplined little nuisances. The U.S.
Children’s Bureau issued a stern warning to a mother not to carry her
infant too much, lest he become “a spoiled, fussy baby, and a household
tyrant whose continual demands make a slave of a mother.”
In 1972, however, Sylvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth of Johns Hopkins
University shook those old ideas about spoiling to their very
foundations. They found that babies whose mothers responded quickly
to their cries during the first months of life did not become spoiled. On
the contrary, infants whose needs were met rapidly and with tenderness
fussed less and were more poised and patient when tested at one year of
age! As Ainsworth and Bell proved—and most parents know in their
hearts—the more you love and cuddle your little baby, the more
confident and resilient he becomes.
Despite this evidence, many new parents still have nagging doubts
about whether they’re holding their babies too much. Although our
natural parental instinct is to calm our baby as quickly as possible, the
repeated warning, “Don’t spoil your baby,” has been drummed into our
heads so much it makes us question ourselves.
Now, I admit it’s easy to feel manipulated when your baby wakes up
and screams every time you gently lower him into the crib. But letting
him cry is no more likely to teach him to be independent than leaving

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him in a dirty diaper is likely to toughen his skin. (It’s reassuring to
know that traditionally many Native American parents held their babies
all day and suckled them all night and still those babies grew up to be
brave, respectful, and self-sufficient.)
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not arguing against establishing a
flexible feeding/sleeping schedule for your baby. (See the discussion of
scheduling in
Chapter 15
.) Some babies and families find scheduling
very helpful. However, trying to mold passionate babies who have
irregular sleeping and eating patterns into a fixed schedule usually leads
to frustration for everyone.
As the Bible says, “To everything there is a season.” I believe
disciplining is a very important parental task—but not with young
infants. The beginning of the fourth month is the earliest time concerns
about accidentally spoiling your baby become an issue. However, before
four months, you have a job that is one hundred times more important
than preventing spoiling; your job is nurturing your baby’s confidence in
you and the world.
Building our child’s faith is one of parenting’s greatest privileges and
responsibilities. I’m convinced that a rapid and sympathetic response to
our baby’s cries is the foundation of strong family values, not the
undermining of them. When your loving arms cuddle your baby or warm
milk satisfies him, you’re telling him, “Don’t worry. I’ll always be there
when you need me.” This begins your baby’s trust in you and becomes
the bedrock of his faith in those closest to him.
Please treasure these amazing first months with your sweet, kissable
baby. There will be plenty of time later on for training and disciplining,
but now is the time for cuddling. Enjoy this time because, as any
experienced parent will tell you, it will be over faster than you could
imagine.