Mar/Apr 1999

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

We received an unusually large volume of letters, mostly via e-mail, in response to Susan Wise Bauer's "No One Knows Best" [Nov./ Dec. 1998]. Many of the letter writers had apparently been directed to the article on the Web and were under the misapprehension that Bauer's review appeared in Christianity Today. The letter by Dena Bernhard below is representative of many such responses.

Baby Talk
I am sorely disappointed in Susan Wise Bauer's comparison of Gary Ezzo and his publications, such as the Babywise series, to actual, proven, recognized experts in the field of child development such as T. Berry Brazelton. It seems to me Bauer has a most definite bias in writing this article—she herself must use the parenting techniques touted in the Babywise books. Do you realize that the over 15,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a warning about the Babywise series? CHRISTIANITY TODAY reported on the problems related to Babywise and other books authored by Mr. Ezzo on February 9, 1998. Why, now, do you publish an article that equates Gary Ezzo, who is by no means an "expert" in child development (nor would he provide any names of the experts he claimed to be in contact with, as CT acknowledges in the above article), with world-renowned experts such as Brazelton?

Also, only Gary Ezzo equates demand feeding (albeit his own distorted, unrecognized by the medical community, definition of demand feeding) with "child-centered parenting." Yet Bauer's article puts the two (child-centered parenting and demand feeding) together as though they are equal and always have been. The AAP recognizes the baby-led schedule is the optimum feeding schedule for babies.

One of the basics that Bauer's article completely ...