Mention the words "sleep training" in any online group of parents and you've just lit the fuse. Comments are turned off faster than you can say "pacifier." Opinions quickly polarize into two heated camps: "sleep training is trauma/cosleeping solves everything" versus "sleep training is research-based, totally safe and fine." Once these two sides dig in, productive discussion stops.

Here's the problem: Neither perspective is entirely correct, and the face-off leaves out a lot of exhausted parents who aren't sleeping but don't want to do cry-it-out. Both the strongly pro- and strongly anti-sleep training camps are convinced that their solution is "the best" one for everyone. On both sides, claims boil down to, “If you just X, Y, Z, your baby will sleep through the night.” Parents who have tried both strategies and are still struggling know this isn’t true. We desperately need a more nuanced way to talk about sleep because the status quo stinks.

We've fallen into these entrenched positions because the information parents receive is focused on some “Generic Baby A.” Advice never accounts for the wide differences between babies, parents, families, and cultures.

Sleep is also not simple. It’s dependent on a network of factors: feeding, development, temperament, family structure, physical context (housing), parental goals and values—the list goes on. Complex issues don't have simple solutions, and applying generic information to real-world complexity is where everything falls apart.

Here’s where reasonable discussion about sleep training typically breaks down, along with what research (and reality) actually tell us:

Of course, neither is true. Research on crying-based sleep training has never investigated whether all crying, for any length of time, at any age or temperament, is safe. In fact, most of the research on side effects doesn’t even say how much crying occurred. So, how much crying was without effect? Also, none of this research was conducted on infants under six months. We really don’t know if there is a certain amount of crying at certain ages that’s not recommended. We honestly don’t know that it’s “always fine.”

It's also not true that........

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