ABSTRACT
Because bringing the child downstairs seemed more indulgent than other forms of soothing, and because the authorities (doctors, baby books and health visitors) seem to unite in deploring this practice, we thought it worthwhile to isolate the proportion of mothers who· admit to allowing it. Here, not surprisingly, we found a discrepancy between the two samples. Fifty-nine per cent of the University sample said that they brought the ha by downstairs if he cried; only 41 per cent were prepared to tell the health visitors that they did.l The clinic attitude seems unambiguous on this point, and indeed many of the mothers of the University sample showed some feeling of guilt in making the admission; so that the true figure may well be above 59 per cent. We may take it, then, that the great majority of mothers are far more lenient over bedtime than they are generally advised to be, and that well over half of them commit the ultimate crime of allowing the baby up again once he has been put to bed.
