Battle of the baby gurus

Sheila Kitzinger

Modern mothers are being made to feel bad about their parenting skills by "harsh disciplinarian" books that treat their babies as "the enemy", complains Sheila Kitzinger, one of Britain's leading experts on childbirth. Her ire is directed at Gina Ford, the childless former nurse whose best-selling strictures for dealing with newborn babies so deeply divide parents. Both women's books will be high on the list of presents for prospective parents this Christmas.

Ms Ford's bible for new mothers, the New Contented Little Baby Book, has sold 700,000 copes in Britain alone. But Mrs Kitzinger, who has five children and three grandchildren and whose own new book, Understanding Your Crying Baby, was published last month, is icily dismissive of its prescriptiveness, saying she would only give Ms Ford's book to one of her daughters as "a joke". She remarks: "It is based on rules and timetables. It might work for dogs."

A social anthropologist and the author of 24 books on mothering, families and female sexuality, Mrs Kitzinger speaks with authority on children and birthing. Her wariness of the rise in Caesarean and forceps births is communicated in lectures to midwives at Thames Valley University, where she is honorary professor.

Polly Toynbee, the social commentator, hailed her as "the Earth Mother, or Birth Mother of the Nation". She wrote: "If Britain is now one of the most progressive countries in obstetric practices, it is largely due to her" while a newspaper bestowed on her the title of "high priestess of the childbirth movement" .

Mrs Kitzinger expounds her child-raising theories in her latest book, which is published by Carroll and Brown. Its 176 pages amount to a stark riposte to "authoritarian" childcare experts like Gina Ford and the American paediatrician Richard Ferber. In it, she writes: "These books advise the reader to organise the home and command their children in almost military style.

'One book promises that if you follow the instructions you will become 'general of your household'. It says, 'When the troublesome intruder seeks attention at inconvenient times, show who's boss. If you don't, a baby takes over and ruins your life. Don't let a little dictator into your home.'

"That is the implicit message in these management systems. Compassion, tenderness - love itself - are symptoms of weakness, and of failure as parents."

Instead, Mrs Kitzinger says, evidence from around the world suggests that ordinary, spontaneous loving mothers who are alert to their babies' needs do better than all the experts put together. She declares: "You don't need an MBA in baby management to be a good mother."

Commenting on her own book, she says: "I wrote it because there were a lot of very bossy, know-it-all systems telling mothers how they can train their children, and they wouldn't be good mothers unless they did so.

"My book looks at what mothers' lives are actually like, what they do when their babies cry, and how they feel."

She says mothers are often plunged into despair when their baby cries, particularly if they have had a difficult birth and particularly if their baby cries for a long time. She relates how many of the mothers whose babies wail relentlessly - sometimes for six hours out of 24 - talked about the profound depression that they experienced. More than half spoke of escape: "Many were near the edge of violence."

Mrs Kitzinger, who raised her five girls in the 1960s, believes the pressure on modern mothers is immense and that "know it all" books merely heightens this anxiety. "[Mothers] think they have to show they are perfect and demonstrate that they can juggle their lives. They want to show that they have an easy baby."

Gina Ford's book stipulates that the baby should sleep from 7pm until 7am. Mrs Kitzinger responds: "With some [babies], the techniques work and the parents feel very pleased, even smug. But if the techniques don't work and parents find they are training their own behaviour rather than their babies', then they can feel very guilty about it - they don't like to let on."

Parenting theory goes in cycles, reckons Mrs Kitzinger. "At the moment we are in a very directive phase when mothers are told babies must not disrupt their lives. Their babies should not affect their careers, they should not affect their sex lives, they should not affect their social lives - it's about 'me time'. Babies are treated like the enemy."

Instead, she says, parents should treat their offspring like "social beings", in need of human interaction rather than mere "servicing" such as feeding, bathing and nappy-changing.

The Kitzinger approach

* If the baby cries at night, take it to bed with you.

* Do your housework while carrying your baby in a sling in order to "mesh with a mother's natural nurturing instincts".

* Half a minute of gentle breathing on the baby's back and tummy can help break the "spiral of stress" between mother and child.

* Parents should tailor their care to their baby's individual needs. "Babies are social beings. They need more than mere servicing."

* Avoid lashing out.

* Understand that babies cry for many different reasons - loneliness, hunger, boredom, fatigue, pain - which all require different solutions.

Gina Ford

Gina Ford: three syllables that are likely to provoke shudders of disgust or smiles of satisfaction in new parents.

Many of the Scot's followers say that her forthright advice on bringing up a child in the first year has saved them from night after night of wracking, demoralising sleeplessness.

Her detractors suggest that her rigid timetables for sleeping and eating have more in common with a penal camp than a loving home.

Ms Ford says the efficiency of her methods is attested to by the sackfuls of letters she receives from parents every year.

Ms Ford, a former maternity nurse with 20 years' experience, lays guidelines for how parents should behave in a baby's first year. She delivers her advice to parents in the best-selling baby maintenance manual, The New Contented Little Baby Book.

In it, she takes issue with medical experts who suggest that babies should be fed on demand when they wake often in the night. She asks: "But what about the parents who have to get up at 7am to deal with older children or start a day's work around 9am?"

The author encourages mothers to wake their children during daytime naps to ensure they sleep better at night. One night-time feed should be enough to keep them sated, she says.

And "controlled crying" - where mother monitors but does not pick up a screaming baby - is permitted.

The book explains what should happen during every hour of a baby's life in great detail. For example, the routine for a one-week-old baby at 1pm stipulates: "Baby must be awake and feeding no later than 2pm, regardless of how well he has slept.

"Open the curtains, unswaddle him and allow him to wake up naturally. Change his nappy. Give 25-35 minutes from the breast he last fed on. If he is still hungry offer 10-15 minutes from the other breast while you drink a large glass of water. Do not feed after 3.15pm, as it will put him off his next feed.

"It is very important that he is fully awake now until 3.30pm, so he goes down well at 7pm; if was very alert in the morning he may be more sleepy now. Do not put too many clothes on him, as extra warmth will make him drowsy." There are also instructions for what to do at 3.30pm, 5pm, 5.45pm, 6pm, 6.15pm, 7pm, 8pm and 9.45pm.

Ms Ford explains: "The aim of the routines is simple. The needs of the baby should be met before the baby has to cry for them.

"By following the guidelines in the routines the parents should quickly learn how to differentiate the needs of their baby. All babies are individuals and that is why the routines change many times during the first year. "

Ms Ford's book is the latest edition of The Contented Little Baby Book, published in 1999.

She has since written four more titles working around the "Contented" theme - From Contented Baby to Confident Child; The Contented Little Baby Book of Weaning; The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers; and The Contented Child's Food Bible with Paul Sacher.

Potty Training in One Week and The Gina Ford Baby and Toddler Cookbook have also been published. Good Mother, Bad Mother will be published next May and a range of branded children's books is scheduled for two years' time. Ms Ford's advice has been translated into Spanish, Hebrew, Dutch and Chinese.

However, she refuses to be drawn into a row with Ms Katzinger. "I never respond to criticism from other childcare experts," she says.

"I spend hours every day of my life talking and listening to parents about how they feel and what they want for their baby.

"I know from talking to these parents that their babies' needs comes before anything else in their life, and I have created a formula that helps them ensure that they are dealing with what their baby really needs - as opposed to what someone else thinks their baby needs."

Customer reviews of her book reveal the chasm between supporters and critics. On the Amazon website, Ria Broome, from Hull, writes: "This book saved my sanity when my baby boy was born. I now have a very happy contented little seven-month-old boy."

One reader from Leeds counters: "If you want to raise a loving, independent and secure individual, who is not just growing but thriving, I would strongly advise against buying this book."

Ms Ford says simply: "I am sure that Sheila's methods will work well for many parents, just as my methods work well for many parents.

"All babies and their parents are different. We live in a democracy and parents should be allowed to follow a style of parenting that suits them, without being criticised about the choice they have made."

The Ford approach

* In the first week, wake the baby every two to three hours to ensure the mother's breasts are stimulated to increase milk.

* Routines for naps, meals, and bath and bed by 7pm.

* Routines teach you to recognise the difference between hunger and tiredness.

* A baby over six months with serious sleeping problems might need controlled crying sleep training, in which the baby is left to cry for longer and longer periods of time.

* Early evening can be the most difficult time. Try to create a quiet atmosphere so the baby is not over-stimulated.

* The key to potty training is to start when the child is ready.