From “Crying Expands the Lungs” to “You’re Going to Spoil That Baby”: How the Cry-It-Out Method Became Authoritative Knowledge

Abstract

The cry-it-out (CIO) method is a sleep training method that encourage parents to let their infants cry at night by themselves for increments of time in order to get them to eventually sleep through the night, on their own. The purpose of this analysis is to explore how the CIO method was constructed as authoritative knowledge to become a normative practice among modern parents. Drawing on various forms of media relevant to laying the groundwork for the promotion of the CIO method over the last 200 years, we examine how parents’ methods for getting babies to sleep have changed. We then argue that the CIO method ascended as authoritative knowledge mostly via the use of fear-based messages, enabling parents to feel validated when they decide to ignore their infants’ nighttime cries so that they can achieve better household sleep.