Given the wording of the story, both women were in the practice of sleeping directly next to their babies. The other woman didn’t roll over her baby because she was wicked, she rolled over her baby because it was next to her while she slept. They left out the part where the “good mother” rolled over her own baby two weeks later and everyone just threw up their hands and declared “What can we do, these things just happen, ya’ know?”
They left out the part where the “good mother” rolled over her own baby two weeks later and everyone just threw up their hands and declared “What can we do, these things just happen, ya’ know?”
Co-sleeping is controversial, not one-sided. It seems that co-sleeping increases the risk of smothering but decreases the risk of SIDS, leading to a net decrease in infant mortality. Always be wary of The Seen and The Unseen.
On the other hand, the majority of related studies seem to be observational, rather than interventional, so it’s quite possible that both co-sleeping and observed “effects” are the result of some third factor, such as the attitude of the parent. For example, it’s likely that a parent who chooses to co-sleep is more well-disposed toward the infant, and is therefore far less likely to kill it deliberately (infanticide), thus making up some unknown decrease in the overall frequency of “SIDS”.
For example, it’s likely that a parent who chooses to co-sleep is more well-disposed toward the infant, and is therefore far less likely to kill it deliberately (infanticide), thus making up some unknown decrease in the overall frequency of “SIDS”.
Indeed; this also probably explains some of the benefit of room-sharing.
How much is the decrease? I imagine that the effect of being responsible for your child’s death by smothering is probably a lot more upsetting and mentally damaging than that of having a child die from SIDS. Maybe that’s lessened by knowing the above information; but most people don’t.
It’s hard to get solid numbers. Roomsharing (which is recommended) decreases SIDS rates by half, which will be the majority of the benefit of a transition from own-room sleeping to cosleeping. It also seems like the overwhelming majority of smothering deaths deal involve other known risk factors, like smoking or drug use by the mother. It’s also frequently recommended against the infant sleeping with the father or siblings (by both sides). Epidemiological studies have the issue that cosleeping is officially discouraged.
If you’re adding in psychological factors, though, there’s some suggesting that cosleeping is good for the infant / their later development.
As may be unsurprising to the cynic, much research on infant sleep is funded by crib manufacturers. My read of the issue is that cosleeping was recommended against because of the known danger of smothering and the social benefit of parental independence from the infant, and that more information is slowly coming to light that the infant is better off cosleeping with the mother, except when other risks are present.
If you co-sleep intelligently, it’s not even much of an issue. There’s lots of devices, both modern and ancient, you can use to keep the child within reach but at no risk of rolling over them.
I expected that.
My own opinion is that if it is necessary for some reason, it’s a good idea, but personally I’d rather be possibly, indirectly, and one instance of a poorly understood syndrome responsible for my baby’s death than actually being the one that crushed him.
It seems that sleeping separately very drastically decreases your chances of personally killing your baby in your sleep.
Such are your desires, then, at the object level. But do you also desire that they be your desires? Are you satisfied with being the sort of person who cares more about avoiding guilt and personal responsibility than about the actual survival and well-being of his/her child? Or would you change your preferences, if you could?
My desires concerning what my desires should be are also determined by my desires, so your question is not valid, it’s a recursive loop. You are first assuming that I care about anything at all, secondly assuming that I experience guilt at all, and thirdly that I would care about my children. As it turns out, you are correct on all three assumptions, just keep in mind that those are not always givens among humans.
What I was saying was that in the two situations (my child dies due to SIDS), and (my child dies due to me rolling over onto him), in the first situation not only could I trick myself into believing it wasn’t my fault, it’s also completely possible that it really wasn’t my fault, and that it had some other cause; in the second situation, there’s really no question, and a very concrete way to prevent it.
To answer your unasked question, I still do not alieve that keeping my child a safe distance away while sleeping but showing love and care at all other times increases her chance of SIDS. If I was to be shown conclusive research of cause and effect between them, I would reverse my current opinion, mos’ def.
Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren’t fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
Consider the alcoholic who desires to stop craving alcohol (a second-order desire), but who continues to drink alcohol (because his first-order desires are stronger than his desire-desires). Presumably your first-order desires are currently defeating your second-order ones, else you’d have already switched first-order desires. But it doesn’t follow from this that your second-order desires are nonexistent!
Perhaps, for instance, your second-order desire is strong enough that if you could simply push a button to forever effortlessly change your first-order desires, you would do so; but your second-order desire isn’t so strong that you’ll change first-order desires by willpower alone, without having a magic button to press. This, I think, is an extremely common situation humans find themselves in. So I was curious whether you were satisfied or unsatisfied with your current first-order priorities.
I still do not alieve that keeping my child a safe distance away while sleeping but showing love and care at all other times increases her chance of SIDS. If I was to be shown conclusive research of cause and effect between them, I would reverse my current opinion, mos’ def.
So it’s not really the case that you’d prioritize psychological-guilt-avoidance over SIDS-avoidance? In that case the question is less interesting, since it’s just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child’s odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
In that case the question is less interesting, since it’s just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child’s odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
I guess, but in real life I don’t sit down with a calculator to figure that out; I’d settle for some definitive research.
Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren’t fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
[all that quote], trivially. What I am saying is that even my “own” desires and the goals that I think are right are only what they are because of my biology and upbringing. If I seek to “debug” myself, it’s still only according to a value system that is adapted to perpetuate our DNA. So to answer truthfully, I am NOT satisfied with my first-order desires, in fact I am not satisfied with being trapped in a human body, from which the first-order desires are spawned.
It seems that sleeping separately very drastically decreases your chances of personally killing your baby in your sleep.
In the story, maybe. I think nowadays you can get specially designed cribs that sort of merge onto the bed, so you’re co-sleeping but can’t roll onto your baby–see http://www.armsreach.com/
I’m involved in a local Native American community and one of the medicine elders I know often makes a sort of device for families with infant children, especially ones with colic or other sleep-disrupting conditions. It’s kind of a cradle-sling type thing you hang securely above your own bed; if kiddo’s crying but otherwise okay you can just reach up and rock them, and they’re otherwise within reach. I’ve seen replicas of the pre-contact version, and even made of birchbark and hung from the rafters of a lodge with sinew it’s evidently still quite sturdy and safe; like, you’d have to knock over the house for it to be an issue. These days, using modern materials, they’re even safer. So this goes back quite a long way.
Then I still blame the mother in the story for not building one of those!
That is pretty neat, I wholeheartedly endorse using those, just in case. In the unlikely event that I produce more biological offspring, I will make use of that knowledge.
She’s not seen as evil because she inadvertently killed her baby, she’s seen as evil because she stole the other woman’s baby and assented to killing it. Right?
It was a property dispute, not a measurement of righteousness. The story served to illustrate Solomon’s wisdom; spiritual judgment of the women was not an issue. As for my opinion, I see both of them as stupid, and only evil to the degree that stupidity influences evil.
Given the wording of the story, both women were in the practice of sleeping directly next to their babies. The other woman didn’t roll over her baby because she was wicked, she rolled over her baby because it was next to her while she slept. They left out the part where the “good mother” rolled over her own baby two weeks later and everyone just threw up their hands and declared “What can we do, these things just happen, ya’ know?”
Co-sleeping is controversial, not one-sided. It seems that co-sleeping increases the risk of smothering but decreases the risk of SIDS, leading to a net decrease in infant mortality. Always be wary of The Seen and The Unseen.
On the other hand, the majority of related studies seem to be observational, rather than interventional, so it’s quite possible that both co-sleeping and observed “effects” are the result of some third factor, such as the attitude of the parent. For example, it’s likely that a parent who chooses to co-sleep is more well-disposed toward the infant, and is therefore far less likely to kill it deliberately (infanticide), thus making up some unknown decrease in the overall frequency of “SIDS”.
Indeed; this also probably explains some of the benefit of room-sharing.
How much is the decrease? I imagine that the effect of being responsible for your child’s death by smothering is probably a lot more upsetting and mentally damaging than that of having a child die from SIDS. Maybe that’s lessened by knowing the above information; but most people don’t.
It’s hard to get solid numbers. Roomsharing (which is recommended) decreases SIDS rates by half, which will be the majority of the benefit of a transition from own-room sleeping to cosleeping. It also seems like the overwhelming majority of smothering deaths deal involve other known risk factors, like smoking or drug use by the mother. It’s also frequently recommended against the infant sleeping with the father or siblings (by both sides). Epidemiological studies have the issue that cosleeping is officially discouraged.
If you’re adding in psychological factors, though, there’s some suggesting that cosleeping is good for the infant / their later development.
As may be unsurprising to the cynic, much research on infant sleep is funded by crib manufacturers. My read of the issue is that cosleeping was recommended against because of the known danger of smothering and the social benefit of parental independence from the infant, and that more information is slowly coming to light that the infant is better off cosleeping with the mother, except when other risks are present.
If you co-sleep intelligently, it’s not even much of an issue. There’s lots of devices, both modern and ancient, you can use to keep the child within reach but at no risk of rolling over them.
I expected that. My own opinion is that if it is necessary for some reason, it’s a good idea, but personally I’d rather be possibly, indirectly, and one instance of a poorly understood syndrome responsible for my baby’s death than actually being the one that crushed him.
It seems that sleeping separately very drastically decreases your chances of personally killing your baby in your sleep.
Such are your desires, then, at the object level. But do you also desire that they be your desires? Are you satisfied with being the sort of person who cares more about avoiding guilt and personal responsibility than about the actual survival and well-being of his/her child? Or would you change your preferences, if you could?
My desires concerning what my desires should be are also determined by my desires, so your question is not valid, it’s a recursive loop. You are first assuming that I care about anything at all, secondly assuming that I experience guilt at all, and thirdly that I would care about my children. As it turns out, you are correct on all three assumptions, just keep in mind that those are not always givens among humans.
What I was saying was that in the two situations (my child dies due to SIDS), and (my child dies due to me rolling over onto him), in the first situation not only could I trick myself into believing it wasn’t my fault, it’s also completely possible that it really wasn’t my fault, and that it had some other cause; in the second situation, there’s really no question, and a very concrete way to prevent it.
To answer your unasked question, I still do not alieve that keeping my child a safe distance away while sleeping but showing love and care at all other times increases her chance of SIDS. If I was to be shown conclusive research of cause and effect between them, I would reverse my current opinion, mos’ def.
Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren’t fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
Consider the alcoholic who desires to stop craving alcohol (a second-order desire), but who continues to drink alcohol (because his first-order desires are stronger than his desire-desires). Presumably your first-order desires are currently defeating your second-order ones, else you’d have already switched first-order desires. But it doesn’t follow from this that your second-order desires are nonexistent!
Perhaps, for instance, your second-order desire is strong enough that if you could simply push a button to forever effortlessly change your first-order desires, you would do so; but your second-order desire isn’t so strong that you’ll change first-order desires by willpower alone, without having a magic button to press. This, I think, is an extremely common situation humans find themselves in. So I was curious whether you were satisfied or unsatisfied with your current first-order priorities.
So it’s not really the case that you’d prioritize psychological-guilt-avoidance over SIDS-avoidance? In that case the question is less interesting, since it’s just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child’s odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
I guess, but in real life I don’t sit down with a calculator to figure that out; I’d settle for some definitive research.
[all that quote], trivially. What I am saying is that even my “own” desires and the goals that I think are right are only what they are because of my biology and upbringing. If I seek to “debug” myself, it’s still only according to a value system that is adapted to perpetuate our DNA. So to answer truthfully, I am NOT satisfied with my first-order desires, in fact I am not satisfied with being trapped in a human body, from which the first-order desires are spawned.
In the story, maybe. I think nowadays you can get specially designed cribs that sort of merge onto the bed, so you’re co-sleeping but can’t roll onto your baby–see http://www.armsreach.com/
I’m involved in a local Native American community and one of the medicine elders I know often makes a sort of device for families with infant children, especially ones with colic or other sleep-disrupting conditions. It’s kind of a cradle-sling type thing you hang securely above your own bed; if kiddo’s crying but otherwise okay you can just reach up and rock them, and they’re otherwise within reach. I’ve seen replicas of the pre-contact version, and even made of birchbark and hung from the rafters of a lodge with sinew it’s evidently still quite sturdy and safe; like, you’d have to knock over the house for it to be an issue. These days, using modern materials, they’re even safer. So this goes back quite a long way.
Then I still blame the mother in the story for not building one of those!
That is pretty neat, I wholeheartedly endorse using those, just in case. In the unlikely event that I produce more biological offspring, I will make use of that knowledge.
She’s not seen as evil because she inadvertently killed her baby, she’s seen as evil because she stole the other woman’s baby and assented to killing it. Right?
It was a property dispute, not a measurement of righteousness. The story served to illustrate Solomon’s wisdom; spiritual judgment of the women was not an issue. As for my opinion, I see both of them as stupid, and only evil to the degree that stupidity influences evil.
Ah, I interpreted your comment as a response to the supposed judgment that the mother whose child died was wicked. That would seem to have been my b.