the common good
Lately, I've been wondering how women from previous centuries did it. How did they convince their infants and toddlers to sleep through the night?
Sleep, along with every other aspect of a child's life, has become a commodity; manuals and aids abound for teaching, cajoling, training or forcing a child to sleep. And yet: to gauge by the free-floating parental angst about children's sleep, fueled by media and marketing (shoot, this may as well be one word: mediarketing), that enveloped me and Mychal well before we became parents as we listened to everyone we knew with children fantasize about a full night's sleep, these market products don't seem to be doing anyone any good.
None of these tools existed in the 19th century; yet sleep deprivation and sleep training, as far as I can tell as someone who has read a lot of women's literature from a lot of cultures, were not all-consuming topics for women (or men) one hundred and fifty years ago.
Before we became parents, we had a tacit agreement that it would not become an all-consuming topic for us either. Except, when you're sleep deprived after six weeks of hellish nights with a pissed off toddler who can and will cry for two, three, four and five hours straight, the idea of sleep becomes an obsession.
I can only speculate, of course. But it seems to me that it has something to do with the notion of "night," as well as the notion of "sleep." In previous centuries, argues A. Roger Ekirch in At Day's Close: night in times past, sleep was split into two periods, the "first sleep" for two to three hours, punctuated by a meal or quiet time and followed by a "second sleep" of about three to four hours. This, save for the middle period which in our case can be anywhere from one to five hours, is exactly how Axel has been sleeping since March 2. Perhaps parents from previous centuries didn't even try to convince or train or force their children to sleep eleven and twelve hour stretches (alone and in the dark).
More likely, though is that women simply nursed their children when they woke crying, no matter how many months past their birth or pounds past their birthweight. For the common good, so that everyone in the house could sleep.
Sleep, along with every other aspect of a child's life, has become a commodity; manuals and aids abound for teaching, cajoling, training or forcing a child to sleep. And yet: to gauge by the free-floating parental angst about children's sleep, fueled by media and marketing (shoot, this may as well be one word: mediarketing), that enveloped me and Mychal well before we became parents as we listened to everyone we knew with children fantasize about a full night's sleep, these market products don't seem to be doing anyone any good.
None of these tools existed in the 19th century; yet sleep deprivation and sleep training, as far as I can tell as someone who has read a lot of women's literature from a lot of cultures, were not all-consuming topics for women (or men) one hundred and fifty years ago.
Before we became parents, we had a tacit agreement that it would not become an all-consuming topic for us either. Except, when you're sleep deprived after six weeks of hellish nights with a pissed off toddler who can and will cry for two, three, four and five hours straight, the idea of sleep becomes an obsession.
I can only speculate, of course. But it seems to me that it has something to do with the notion of "night," as well as the notion of "sleep." In previous centuries, argues A. Roger Ekirch in At Day's Close: night in times past, sleep was split into two periods, the "first sleep" for two to three hours, punctuated by a meal or quiet time and followed by a "second sleep" of about three to four hours. This, save for the middle period which in our case can be anywhere from one to five hours, is exactly how Axel has been sleeping since March 2. Perhaps parents from previous centuries didn't even try to convince or train or force their children to sleep eleven and twelve hour stretches (alone and in the dark).
More likely, though is that women simply nursed their children when they woke crying, no matter how many months past their birth or pounds past their birthweight. For the common good, so that everyone in the house could sleep.
posted by aelis at 2:28 PM
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