There is nothing the programme makers at Channel 4 love more than a
controversy. And there are few topics more controversial than the care of
small babies: routine or no routine; breast or bottle; cloth or disposable
(nappies, that is); controlled crying or cuddles on demand.
So what better idea than a series pitting three very disparate methods of
childrearing against each other, using real families and, of course, real
newborn babies?
Bringing Up Baby will air next Tuesday at 9pm, and is sure to get
tempers going on the school run. In the green corner is Claire Scott, a
33-year-old single mother of two and evangelical proponent of a method
called the Continuum Concept. Popular in the 1970s, it advocates holding
your baby continuously for the first six months of its life and sleeping
with it. In the buttoned-up-navy-blue-uniformed corner is Claire Verity.
This Claire is a 41-year-old mother of none and professional maternity nurse
who practises the rigid methodology of Truby King, the New Zealand doctor
whose book Feeding and Care of Baby shaped the upbringing of
Britain’s postwar baby-boomers.
Verity’s methods include leaving babies outside on their own to “air” and
putting them on a strict and uncompromising routine from day one.
Somewhere in the middle is Dreena Hamilton, 58, mother of three, grandmother
to five and herself the product of a super-strict Truby King-style
upbringing. Perhaps because of this, she is a passionate believer in the
wisdom of Dr Benjamin Spock, whose book Baby and Child Care, with
its overriding philosophy of love and understanding, shaped childhoods in
the 1960s. She believes that all babies are individuals and that highly
prescriptive methods are therefore misguided. Instead, mother and baby
should learn from each other, doing whatever seems right at the time.
Each of the women will advise two sets of new parents over the course of three
months, and guide them through the highs and lows of their chosen
philosophies. From the very first episode, tensions between the three
mentors are high, and there is clearly very little love lost between the two
Claires. These factors, plus the raw emotion of those first few mad weeks of
parenthood, will make for highly explosive, emotional and, of course,
controversial television.
THE RAINFOREST METHOD
CLAIRE SCOTT
Supporter of the Continuum Concept
I must confess that when I set off to interview Scott, on the small industrial
estate in Hertford from where she runs her baby sling and cloth nappy
business, I was not especially well-inclined towards her methods. The
Continuum Concept is based on an anthropological study of a Venezuelan tribe
called the Yequana. In 1975, an American writer called Jean Lied-loff wrote
about her experiences of life with the tribe, noting how their methods of
childrearing seemed to produce happy, confident, well-adjusted youngsters.
Babies were held in arms at all times, breast-fed on demand and generally
integrated into every aspect of daily life.
That is all very well if you live in the rainforest. If, however, you live in
Britain, and have a job and a mortgage and everything else, is it not just a
bit impractical? “The Continuum Concept is a lifestyle choice, not a
parenting concept,” says Scott. “It’s about creating a family unit – and a
community – within which this type of parenting can work.” Scott grew up in
Letchworth, near where she now lives with her two children, aged 9 and 7. “I
was 23 when I had my first baby.” She read Leidloff’s book when her first
child was about eight months old, and embraced its principles from then on.
It would be tempting to dismiss Scott as an idealistic hippy. But that would
be too simplistic. For a start she runs her own business, successfully.
Secondly, she is focused and eloquent. And if you get past the headlines –
never putting your baby down, breast-feeding on demand, sleeping with it – a
lot of what she is saying makes sense.
“Because women don’t have enough support, and because they have not grown up
in an environment where they see baby-care as a matter of course, having a
baby sends them into panic mode,” Scott says. “This is why they turn to
manuals.”
She believes that strict routines only enslave mothers more. “Put your baby in
a sling, get out there and get on with your everyday tasks. Your baby will
be calm, confident and integrated into your life.”
THE SPOCK FOLLOWER
DREENA HAMILTON
Proponent of Dr Spock’s ideas
Of all the three mentors, Dreena Hamilton is the most immediately
approachable. She has a friendly smile and comes across as a genuinely nice
person without any real agenda to push – apart from happiness and harmony.
At 58, she was raised in postwar Britain on ration books and routine. Yes,
Hamilton was a Truby King baby. “I had two younger brothers,” she says, “and
we had a very strict upbringing. We were all terrified of our father.” It
was her mother, she says, who provided love and refuge. She owes a great
deal to her.
She left school to become a nurse, and fell into modelling and
air-stewardessing. “Then one day this heavily pregnant woman got on the
plane with two little ones in tow. I have always just adored babies and
small children, and I thought: let’s do it. So I went home and got married,
and gave birth exactly nine months after the wedding!
“In truth my daughter came to the party a bit early,” she says. “I think you
need at least two years of marriage to fold into each other. To begin with I
was guilty of totally focusing on the baby – so I did a lot of it alone in
the early days.
“It was the crying that really wore me down. And then someone told me to get
Dr Spock. It was a revelation. He gave you licence to do what you felt you
wanted to do, rather than what you were supposed to do. He told you how to
do it yourself; that it was your baby and he or she is unique. Watch and
learn from her, he said, and you won’t go far wrong.
“When we were talking about doing this programme I didn’t want to come under
the banner of ‘expert’,” says Hamilton. “There is no right or wrong way with
Dr Spock. It’s all about suggestions and empathy.”
THE STRICT ROUTINE
CLAIRE VERITY
Follower of the Truby King method
I bump into Claire Verity outside the offices where we are due to meet. I know
it’s her, even though I’ve never clapped eyes on her before. She is not in
uniform but is nevertheless straight out of Central Casting: the rigid
posture, the determined mouth, the precision grooming. I’ve seen a few scary
maternity nurses in my time, and Verity is the scariest.
She wears her strictness as a badge of honour. It is what her reputation as
baby-tamer to the stars (Mick Jagger, Sting, Jack Nichol-son and more) is
based on. She has 24 years’ experience, a string of nannying qualifications
and, crucially, no children of her own. This is one of the sticks that her
critics (speaking recently at a baby show she had to ask security to remove
a group of hecklers) have used to beat her with, accusing her of cruelty
towards babies and their mothers.
“Oh yes,” she says, “I’ve been hung, drawn and quartered by the National
Childbirth Trust. The last lot looked like they had just come off some peace
camp. They accuse me of being a bully: I think they are the bullies. They
have their opinions and their boxes to tick and they stick to them. But
they’re just as rigid as any of my routines.
“They look appalling – and they are appalling. I just loathe them. They’ve
even started a blog to get rid of me,” she continues, warming to her theme.
“There they were, barricading the back of the room, bitching about me. What
does she know? She doesn’t have any children of her own.’ Well, I always
say: does a heart surgeon have to operate on himself?”
Verity sees her primary function as a maternity nurse as establishing a
routine so that parents can “regain control of the situation”. Her
guru, Truby King, first applied his childcare model of strict feeding times
and fresh air to baby calves; Verity loves animals, and has a house full of
them; but they don’t receive the same treatment as her clients’ babies:
“Cats, dogs, they rule the roost in my house,” she says. “We’ve had to put a
lock on the bedroom door because the cats swing on the handle and come in.”
Doesn’t it drive you crazy, I ask? “No,” she replies with a giggle.
This from a woman who won’t let mothers cuddle their newborns to sleep. But
that, in her view, is the price you have to pay if you want your life back.
“I can get a baby sleeping through the night in a month,” she says. She
believes that tiredness is a key factor in postnatal depression, and so a
routine is vital if the mother is to avoid teetering over the edge. “A baby
is easy once it is clean, warm, fed – and left alone.”
Bringing Up Baby, Channel 4, Tuesday, September 25, 2007
