Decease… Death… Die…

I have decided to make a small research and to read some additional information about the stereotypes of the co-sleeping. As some books mark out, there are such known stereotypes of co-sleeping….and what is the history of the prejudices and stereotypes…

Stereotypes about co-sleeping:
1. Co-sleeping makes a child less independent and mature.
2. Co-sleeping disrupts parents’ and children’s sleep.
3. Co-sleeping is dangerous because it can cause a baby to be smothered.

So, the first myth that I have discovered is that co-sleeping is very dangerous.

There are many different myths about co-sleeping and sometimes it is very difficult to determine the truth from the prejudices. And now I’ll talk about that mothers are always afraid to smother a baby during the sleep. Not to impose such horrible stories to our women, let’s first discover where the root of this wide-spread belief is. So, let’s begin from the Medieval Europe – it is not a secret for everybody that at those times there was a high children’s mortality. Overpopulation of the cities, misery, big families – all this didn’t promote the adequate care about children. The mortality kept growing (more often it was because of difficult delivery, illnesses and so-called “smothering” in sleep), that’s why a great part of the European countries from the 16th till 17th century passed laws which were prohibiting co-sleeping of the children with parents. But, all the same, there appeared the refutations of such cases: there exist the historical sources which explain the reasons of the children’s mortality. According to one of them, a great number of children in the family and lack of the possibility to feed them provoked mothers to get rid of the newborn babies deliberately, interpreting this as the accidents, and especially – not successful co-sleeping. The other source proves this fact – it appears that mothers were acknowledging during the confessions to the priests that they began to spread the rumors that “a baby was smothered during the sleep accidentally” according to the above-mentioned reason.

After that, for a long time, this myth of the Middle Ages was supported in the society due to the different reasons. For example, one of the wide-spread explanations is the incest between fathers and daughters, guarding the holiness of the “romantic” union of the husband and wife where the children are impeding it.

Of course, this statement if fair for the cases when the mother doesn’t suffer from the difficult psyche disorders, didn’t take hypnotics and is not in the state of the alcoholic intoxication.

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