I'd say ignore most advice from people you do know too. Especially anyone who doesn't have kids, or only has one kid. There are definitely good tips to take from parents or books -- the stuff from happiest baby on the block (swaddling, shushing, etc), which baby carrier doesn't hurt your friend's back, etc. But kids are so different, what works for one won't work for another. So anyone who listens to your tale of why your particular baby is difficult and then tells you why you're doing something wrong is just full of shit. They can tell you things to try, and who knows if they'll work, it's always worth a shot. But please don't let yourself feel bad because some random friend of yours had an easy baby and you're having a hard time. Kids are different and it's incredibly unfair how big a delta there is between easy babies and hard babies.
[EDIT: I went back and realized the original ask wasn't just about newborns, but about parenting all different age levels. I'm not sure that changes much of my opinion, but I do think it makes a collaborative project more interesting/useful]
> Especially anyone who doesn't have kids, or only has one kid.
People say this all the time even though it ignores the fact that virtually anyone has parents even if they don't have kids. Having a kid doesn't make you better at parenting. At best, it forces you to think about parenting but there was nothing stopping you from doing that before.
There’s a certain empathy that is hard to have unless you’ve gone through it. People without kids have a tendency to underestimate both how challenging child rearing can be and also how totally different kids can be. That ends up with people giving parenting advice as if there’s a single right answer when there’s no such thing. It’s why I said people with only one child fall into the same trap. Often they think that the way their kid was is how all kids are. But kids can be so amazingly different, and it’s hard to truly understand that unless you have a couple kids yourself and you can experience it firsthand. I don’t claim to know all about parenting, but I’ve experienced enough to know that I can’t give any other parent the right answer for how to raise their kid.
This very much reminds me of inaccurate perceptions people have of being a teacher since they've had so many teachers they get a sense that they are pretty familiar with the profession but most have only seen one side of it. Also analogous to the other point you were making, a difficulty in education research is how hard it is to come up with generalizable conclusions since each context can be unique.
> Having a kid doesn't make you better at parenting
Holy cow, this is so untrue. Having a kid is pretty much the _only_ way to get better at parenting, saving maybe babysitting someone else's kids for long periods of time.
Speak to them. Listen to them. Read to them. Play with them. Don't try to over manage things. Don't over protect them. Let them fail. Let them fall. Don't be too pushy with things you want them to like.
while I generally agree with your point, I'd like to point out that all those things are wildly generic and subjective (but much like "eat with moderation" still meaningful!).
E.g. what does "over protect" mean? Is it ok to let your 2yo climb on the climbing things at the playground, even if they are for bigger kids? Is hovering to catch him/her in case of fall overprotecting? What about climbing on trees? And Fences? At what age exactly is it ok to let your kids go to school or come back on their own?
Or, "read to them". Is one story at evening enough? one booklet per kid maybe? 2 each seems better, but then, probably it's better to read them something in the morning too etc.
Going back to the original proposition, most likely it won't matter too much if you read 1 book a week or ten stories a day to your kid, s/he will love you anyway, and as long as you are not abusive and keep them fed and clean, you'll be a good enough parent, which is the best one can hope for.
Not to mention recalibrating your sense of "normal" from your life before children. Totally not saying that one has to let the child completely take over their life ... but it's also unhealthy to expect everything to stay the same as it was before the kid arrived. Aside from the kid _demanding_ more of your time for fulfilling their basic needs, you will likely _want_ to spend more time bonding with them.
I did kind of a poor job at this at first, and it resulted in me getting completely burned out from trying to maintain work, side projects, community engagement (ie. the user group/meetup I had started), etc etc etc ... once I re-evaluated my priorities, I realized that for the next few years I had to cut back on that other stuff a bit to focus on my family (and work of course, gotta bring home that bacon after all ;) ). Resulted in a significant QoL improvement for me ... and the kids eventually got older, which opened up more time for "stuff" again :)
Loads of love and take the time to listen to them when they speak to you even if you don't understand just nod and continue engaging they get used to you paying them attention in this way and eventually you'll understand them.
There is lots of room for variation, but there are also things that are well established scientifically to have a known effect.
Talking to babies more helps them learn language faster.
Reading to children helps them become stronger readers.
spanking children makes them more likely to have problems with aggression. Later in life it's a risk factor for criminality and problems with mental health.
> spanking children makes them more likely to have problems with aggression.
I don't spank, but up until 30 or 40 years ago, spanking was a perfectly acceptable form of punishment, and probably most kids were spanked at one time or another. And it wasn't like society was significantly more aggressive than it is now. So I don't know how you can make that sweeping generalization -- at least post links to some studies.
Here is one study that found that the link between spanking and aggression is greatly determined by the context in which the spanking occurs: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED415019.pdf
Violent crime rates both in America and within the developed world at large are way down. This is usually overlooked because we've now become hypersensitized to remaining acts of violence - a "mass shooter" that kills nobody but themselves is now all over the Internet in real time, while when I was a kid in the 80s, everyday violence within large swathes of American society would just be a "just another homicide in a blighted urban area, don't go there". But by the statistics, America today is a lot safer than 30 years ago.
Now, I have no idea whether this is because of spanking or not, and drawing a causal connection is much harder in the face of all the conflating changes within society since then. But it's factually incorrect to say that "society wasn't significantly more aggressive than it is now", because it was.
There's a wider context, though, where violent crime during 1940-1960 was abnormally low compared to the earlier part of the century (which had violent crime rates similar to today), and then it shot up in the 1970s. And the 1900s in general has been quite low to historical homicide rates in colonial times.
> Proponents of the lead-crime hypothesis argue that the removal of lead additives from motor fuel, and the consequent decline in children's lead exposure, explains the fall in crime rates in the United States beginning in the 1990s. This hypothesis also offers an explanation of the rise in crime in the preceding decades as the result of increased lead exposure throughout the mid-20th century.
Really, I doubt we'll ever figure out what causes an increase or decrease in the crime rate, because there's likely more than one cause. Because of that, I don't think it's good evidence on either side for a debate on spanking. (Which, BTW, has just validated the point everyone's been making that any collaboratively-built parenting encyclopedia is likely to generate more heat than light.)
Yes, but then there's studies showing spanking children makes them more aggressive. The physical abuse of children is by the physically abusive who were themselves physically abused.
It isnt merely accidental. Of course it isnt the explanation for WW2, or the 1970s murder rate. Neither is lead.
Curious to know whether people downvoting really believe that reading to newborn has an effect. And whether they ever seen newborn if they indeed believe so.
Give your kids loads of love, in whatever way feels right to you and your family.