My favorite type of parenting writing is the kind that tells you to re-examine your fatherly (or motherly) anxieties and then just dump them down a deep, dark mineshaft and forget about them completely. Today’s example—an article in Slate revealing that the milestones we rely upon to tell us how our babies are developing have little basis in reality:
Babies take different routes to the same destination. There’s no right way to learn to walk, for example, and there’s scarcely even a right time: The accurate range for when babies should start extends from 8 months to almost 20 months—an amazingly, almost meaninglessly broad stretch of time. The most interesting research on motor development in recent years treats it as the product of many different systems: the infant’s environment, personality, nervous system, and personal physical limitations. When all these variables interact, you get a lot of different results, as countless studies have made clear. You don’t get a chart that looks like something out of The Ascent of Man.
And so, once again, I tell you, my dear, dear readers, to chill out, relax, stop worrying, have a beer. As Pete Townsend once sort of said, the kids are alright.