New parents should carry their baby upright and facing outwards to improve their child’s development, one leading academic has suggested.
The technique allows the baby to observe the world as seen by the parents and could result in a more confident and self-assured child.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond said Western parents could learn a great deal from parenting techniques used in more traditional societies like tribes in the Amazon and Africa.
Diamond said, unlike a pram, keeping a baby at chest height and facing outwards where it can interact with the world could leave them more “emotionally secure, self-confident, curious and autonomous.”
The 75-year-old professor of geography at the University of California bases his observations on his 50 years visiting tribal communities.
In his book,
The World Until Yesterday, he argues that babies respond better to traditional rather than modern conditions.
Quickly comforting a crying baby, letting them sleep near their parents, and lots of physical contact are also beneficial, he says.
“It is only relatively recently that some of these child-rearing practices became unfashionable. I suggest it’s time to consider some of them seriously again,” he told the
Daily Mail.
The professor, a father of two, added the methods have “in effect already been tested by natural experiments: different societies have been raising their children differently for a long time, and we can see the results.”
