外刊阅读 | Time | 新型育儿大师的崛起

The curriculum was ever a subject for debate, and up until the introduction of the National Curriculum, left to educationalists. Political interference always had its pitfalls, especially with "indoctrination" in some countries being treated with understandable suspicion.

课程一直是人们争论的话题，直到国家课程出台，才由教育家决定。政治干预总是有其隐患，尤其是在一些国家，“灌输”受到人们的怀疑，这是可以理解的。

The Rise of a New Kind of Parenting Guru

新型育儿大师的崛起

1

There is an art to laying down a newborn baby. Or, rather, a science. The American Academy of Pediatrics will tell you that babies need to sleep swaddled, on their backs, in an empty bassinet. But what if your infant abhors a crib? If you buy a newborn course offered by Cara Dumaplin, the former NICU and labor-and-delivery nurse who bills herself as a baby and toddler sleep expert, as I did when my daughter was 6 weeks old, you will get a video demonstration of how to make the dreaded chest-to-bassinet transfer. In it, a swaddled baby lies across Dumaplin’s forearm, head resting in her palm. Dumaplin’s thumb holds a pacifier in the child’s mouth. Dumaplin doesn’t rock the baby to sleep but rather moves her wrist to subtly jiggle the head back and forth. When the child’s eyes begin to flutter, Dumaplin slips her into a crib. She then removes her forearm like a spatula from beneath a pancake.

And many, many people would like to learn: Dumaplin’s Instagram account Taking Cara Babies now has 2.7 million followers. But she is hardly the only mom on social media using her professional know-how to share—and sell—parental advice. She’s part of a wave of women marrying the authenticity of a fellow parent with the credentials of a Ph.D., RN, or other distinguished degree, and leveraging Instagram and TikTok to launch newsletters, podcasts, video courses, products, and books. 

But it’s never just five minutes, is it? And when it comes to the high-stakes job of raising a tiny human, it’s never just a mindless scroll. For an anxious generation already trying to optimize every aspect of their lives, like reading dozens of reviews before purchasing the best air purifier, it’s easy to fall down a dizzying rabbit hole of advice and wind up feeling more exhausted than enlightened. “Our parents could go to the library or get a referral from your pediatrician for a specialist. That’s it. They didn’t have thousands of experts living in their back pockets at all times,” Petersen says. “The immediacy and availability of the information encourages us to believe that we’re negligent if we don’t pursue it.”

For at least the past half-century, there have been two key sources of parental advice: the Experts and the Moms. Pediatricians like Dr. Spock published best-selling books that parents treated as childcare bibles—outlining how much weight a baby should gain and what to do in case of a fever. For slightly squishier problems, like which noise machine to buy when you’re tired of shushing, friends and, in more recent years, internet-famous moms offered solutions.

“There are more college-educated parents today than there were in the past, so they feel that they have the capacity or the knowledge to collect information and figure out what’s best for their kids,” says Kei Nomaguchi, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University who studies parenthood.The question is whether all this information is helpful or ultimately overwhelming. “Parents are now responsible for being experts in so many different areas. You should be your child’s registered dietitian and occupational therapist and literacy coach and sleep instructor,” says Anderson. “And if your child has a problem, it’s your fault.” 

Journal：Time(July 23, 2024)

Title：The Rise of a New Kind of Parenting Guru

Category：Parenting

There’s no tried-and-true formula. If what you’re doing is working, you don’t have to change it.

没有行之有效的方法。如果你的方法有效，你就不必改变。

We are so obsessed with information and doing it right and what the data show—and we’re also obsessed with not f-cking up our kids to a point that we’re actually going to f-ck them up.

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