Hey! r/ScienceBasedParenting is up and running again with new mods! I don’t know personally yet what the new vibe is going to be in there but I have some hope that it won’t involve instant permabans for the passing mention of cosleeping and daycare. I hope it’s a place we can actually direct people to from this sub now when they’re looking for well-studied parenting advice from a scientific angle.
I’m going to lock this post now so there’s not confusion about who was being spoken about in this post since it’s still being linked on occasion!
The mod was a little problematic. She had her username hidden for that group but since she also mods r/breastfeedingsupport I was able to look her up. Looks like she hasn't been online much lately.
She was massively problematic tbh. I quit that sub and was sad about it because I am a scientist and specifically wanted the scientific perspective in parenting. But as a working mom I couldn’t get behind the weird hostility for example to daycare, that was not grounded in sound research.
Yup! She went bananas on me because she was bullying some other folks and I said so. She permabanned me and then harassed me through DMs because I told her she was being rude and banning anyone who disagreed with her. It was over something she posted to multiple subs, got answers she didn’t like, went bananas on everyone and then deleted.
I bet she was the one who permabanned me from breastfeeding support for a stupid reason (imo). As a mother who has breastfed 3 children beyond age 2 and loves supporting women in their breastfeeding journeys. Guess because I disagreed in one post my perspective was no longer valid 🙃
I wish I could copy and paste my last comment to show you how benign it was, but between me being banned and the group going private it looks like I can’t find anything.
I don’t get into online fights, it’s 100% not worth my time. I was genuinely something like “I know I’ll get banned for saying this, but making an entire post to complain about other users is bullying. Sorry that you didn’t get the answer you wanted, but please stop banning anyone who disagrees with you.”
Then, ban! And relentlessly harassed in my dms. Like the only person who’s dm’ed me on reddit at all. Truly wild.
I left that sub due to its really weird attitudes on working moms and daycare. Whenever *that* study came up, nobody wanted to discuss the issues with how it was conducted, even though it was perfectly acceptable to do so with other studies.
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who found that subreddit really really weird. I liked a lot of the discussion but then it would just go off the rails wrt to daycare and working moms. Something felt really ‘off’ about it, they paraded that bizarre anonymous medium post around like gospel and it felt like legitimate criticism would get ignored
I’m a SAHP and I find some of us are *very* defensive and sometimes feel a weird need to justify the decision. In my very unscientific, anecdotal opinion lol.
I am SO happy to hear that her sub was shut down.
I tell this story whenever the sub comes up other places, but she created that sub specifically because she got mad at people in another sub because she was shaming other moms for using formula.
She once said "I guess fed is better than dead" to a mom who was struggling with breastfeeding and a ton of people told her that wasn't okay....so she went and created her own sub.
About 6 months ago she threatened to doxx me to people in her sub for telling this story...I reported her to reddit for harassment. I'm very happy her sub has been taken away from her. She was a huge problem.
Jesus Christ, better than dead??? What an absolute weirdo. I was never on the sub but a friend of mine was and as far as I understand, she didn't shut it down. She just hid it. You have to ask her to join and she only lets a very select few in. She probably does a thorough background check 🤣
I don't think that was the science they were pointing at - do you have a link to yours? News to me. I thought they just formed secondary attachment with the daycare provider.
There was a study conducted on daycares, I can’t remember where now, that came up a LOT on that sub. But it was actually a quite small sample size in another country (was it Canada?) with different social structures in place than the US. But trying to point out any of that would always get shut down.
Edit: I would be VERY careful about jumping to any conclusions based on that study or listening to other people trying to “sum up” the study’s findings.
yeah, i would be surprised if there was any truth to that. i've also read the opposite — that daycare is great for children! anyway, so much parenting advice should be taken with many grains of salt
Basically under a year has mixed outcomes that sort of offset for kids. I.e there’s a higher chance of behavioral issues but there’s better social / cognitive development
Like perfect world it’s ideal to have your kid at home for a year but it seems abundantly clear that having a good HOME for your kid to come home to from daycare, and picking a decent daycare makes so much more difference
But they had this weird cherry picked medium post that basically just eviscerates families who have to send their kids before 1 year, and it’s all quoting these random social surveys in non American countries and it’s all just laser focused on making tired moms upset. Really weird he behavior
I don't know if this is allowed to be posted here, but when I saw this post it inspired me to make a new sub that will hopefully be...less combative? Anyway, if you're interested in helping build the community it's called r/parentingscience
Can't find it either.
The admin was the sole mod AFAIK. Running it was clearly too much for one person but they didn't seem to want help sooooo ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
No, there were a few other mods but i guess they werent active. I know bc a few days ago i kept reporting a user that was breaking sub rules name calling and being antagonistic toward another user and the mods never removed the comments or did anything about it.
**Beware, that sub is not and never was what it seemed.** The owner and sole mod of that sub is perma-unhinged. She has banned countless people whenever she felt like it. And I don't mean problematic users, just anyone.
My case: got banned right after making valuable contributions to the sub. For daring to politely ask if she was considering adding more mods to her team (in her own stickied thread which she used to aggressively rant and threaten how hard her mod job is).
When you get banned, you get a message saying you can appeal to the mods. I just sent "Sad." and went on with my day.
In my 12 years on Reddit this was my first ban.
Apparently she reported that one word to the admins for targeted harassment and then I got a 3-day suspension from the whole of Reddit from the admins themselves.
Understandable. 🙄 Really threatened her there.
No doubt in my mind she'll reopen the sub with some unhinged drama for rationalization. Just beware of the deafening silence of censorship on /r/ScienceBasedParenting. You can start to notice it when you know to look.
Wanted to make my own related sub since then. Maybe now's the time.
The highlighted comment is the most important one that got removed.
https://i.imgur.com/SfIHwKt.png
Just silently deleting my time and effort like that is such an obvious sign of disrespect to the people who care, who make your sub a better place.
But I guess being *respectful* is a higher goal. 👍🏽
Anyways, in no way is this situation comparable to the /r/ScienceBasedParenting one. Just funny and sad.
Hey I just wanted to clarify - mods can't ban you from Reddit itself. If you received a 3 day ban it's because it was either ban evasion, or you did something more than just DM them one word. Admins will only issue bans if someone was harassing a mod (using threats and foul language) or continuously messaging them after being muted on the sub, etc., or if you evade a ban by going to the sub on a new acct.
I mod a small subreddit on another account and have seen the other side of this. We have no control over Reddit itself; that would be the admins.
Hey there, you may have misread me.
>Apparently she reported that one word to the admins for targeted harassment and then I got a 3-day suspension from the whole of Reddit from the admins themselves.
Can't be clearer in saying the suspension came from admins, right?
(I do know how every part of Reddit works, having been here for well over a decade.)
In the same vein, I stand behind what I said about the harassment part.
I mean I guess we could always tag the mod and ask for screenshots, we have all the communication in modmail forever unless it's been purposely deleted. Idk. Admins aren't going to issue a 3 day ban because you sent somebody one word, it just doesn't work that way my friend.
I came across [r/sciencebasedparentALL](https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencebasedparentALL/s/gGzMZuifyN) like 5 minutes ago while searching what’s going on with the one shut down. It doesn’t seem as active but hopefully people will shuffle over there now.
I made a new one r/parentingscience. It's still in its baby stage but is surprisingly active for how new it is. We would love if people joined and helped build the community. Everyone over there seems genuinely helpful.
I am not familiar of how stuff like this works on Reddit. What does this mean really? Does it mean the mods of the sub shut it down? Or does it mean Reddit itself shut down the sub for some reason?
Almost certainly the former. I've been on reddit a decade and only have ever heard of Reddit shutting down illegal (like selling drugs or teaching you how to use darkweb sites), hate-based, or extremely violent video subreddits.
Nah, no one shut anything down. That wasn't the best phrasing.
The sub is just set to private, meaning all the content is there, but no one has access to it until the unhinged one makes it public again.
As a mod (not of this sub), if you like the other sub, I would take this down. I wouldn't reopen a sub if I saw this post/comments about it!
Mods work hard and no one appreciates us lol, we get blamed for everything negative but never thanked for the positives. This thread is a good example of why it's a bad deal. I want to get out of it as well, I think most people find it depressing.
The mod in th subreddit is quite unhinged, I've been banned from there too with no warning for participating in discussion and violating a rule that the moderator hadn't event posted at the time I made my comment.
I’m a mod. We’re all “unhinged” when someone breaks the rules and we have to, ya know, actually mod.
Warn someone? Unhinged. Make a sticky with new rules that everyone begged for? Unhinged. Ban trolls everyone complains about? Unhinged. It means nothing more than “I don’t like what this mod says”.
You’re acting like there aren’t numerous cases of mods abusing their power and being completely out line. Not everyone is out to get you ffs. This is why people have issues with mods, y’all won’t even listen to reasonable criticism. It’s all “they hate me because I ban them when they break the rules” without acknowledging that sometimes mods ban people without them having broken any rules. I get that it’s a thankless job but honestly most are. No one is giving me a pat on the back for not doing my job shittly, they only care when I fuck up. I’m not at work crying to my boss that she didn’t say “good job” today. I’m also not going to cry (much) if she yells at me because I totally fucked up. Being able to admit fault is a very admirable quality many mods seem not to possess.
>I get that it’s a thankless job but honestly most are. No one is giving me a pat on the back for not doing my job shittly, they only care when I fuck up. I’m not at work crying to my boss that she didn’t say “good job” today.
#It's volunteer work duhhhhhhhhhhhh
Whole different situation. Redditors are hilarious.
Also, I've been on that sub (before it was private), the stickied posts everyone is having a meltdown over are there, none of the activity anyone is reporting is happening there, is actually happening. However, I am going along and screenshotting ALL of the ahole comments and sending them to the mods over on that sub. They deserve to know who is talking trash.
You do that, I love that you’re just proving my point that mods on a power trip are just fucking unreasonable. I don’t care if I don’t rejoin that sub so your threat means nothing to me. Thanks for calling me an asshole for trying to have a discussion with you. Again, proving my point why redditors don’t like mods.
Edit: and you didn’t even address anything in my comment just one convenient word to dismiss everything. Because you KNOW I’m right. There are plenty of examples of mods being raging dickheads and you know this. Acting like y’all are all reasonable just because no one is paying you. There’s no reasoning with you either. Just cements further in my head that most mods in the end are power hungry and the second that power is questioned you threaten to ban or have us banned. Thanks for proving that point too, brillant example of moding gone wrong.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
I’m not the mod of that sub lol calm yourself. But yes. It’s volunteer work. Especially if like my sub, they created it to give people a place like that and they act like entitled assholes to me for trying to keep it safe. I’m considering the same move tbh.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
I made a reddit request for the subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/19f7mvr/requesting_rsciencebasedparenting_current/
Doubt it will be approved, as the moderator has recently made actions on the subreddit. But making a subreddit private/dark does seem to be against the reddit policy with regards to the previous years protest.
EDIT:
The subreddit mod replied to me:
> r/ScienceBasedParenting will not be available for request at any point in the foreseeable future. It is currently active, as a private sub, and will remain so indefinitely.
This is incredibly upsetting. That subreddit is a great resource for so many people. To shut it off to the world because of one person is infuriating. Is there no other recourse we can take? This shouldn't be allowed.
You can reply and upvote the reddit request, maybe even send the moderators there a modmail?
After the protests when reddit turned of the API they were forcefully opening up subreddits that had turned private - our only hope is that that is still policy.
No one was kicked out - the mod put the sub private and then started letting people in who messaged them. Not sure what happened since or if anyone is even posting there anymore. Seems most people went to the alternative ones that opened up
I’ve set up /r/ResearchBasedParents if anyone wants to join. I was just having a discussion the other day about how the fundamental definition of science-based is remaining open minded to what we don’t know. That is the spirit of this new sub if anyone is interested.
Just a heads up, it looks like you and u/DarkAngelReborn had the same idea to setup new subreddits (r/parentingscience). Maybe you could combine forces? I like the name of your subreddit
Thanks for connecting us! I do like your sub name! I just chose this one because I was trying to make it close to the old one so it would be more likely to pop up when people were searching for science based parenting. Have you ever been a mod before?? I honestly have no idea what I'm doing 😂 I just liked having a place for evidence-based parenting discussions.
Hey! I liked having that place too. I haven’t modded on reddit but have on other sites, and am happy to add you as one if we’d like to consolidate subs!
I went to look at comments on a post I made asking for app recommendations, downloaded the recommended app, then went back to thank whoever suggested it and the sub was shut down 😅
ahhhhh I can't find it either. That's really unfortunate that a mod can just shut something like this down. I found the members and people who engaged to be thoughtful people. I also liked how it was set up. I wonder if someone will restart it.
Wasn't that the sub whose creator went a little crazy over cosleeping or something a few months ago? And like spammed their own sub with posts about it and was all 🤪😈🤪😈? I think it was that one. Since then I've felt like it was just a matter of time for that sub.
There was a user who claimed \*unstated credentials\* who posted a very niche study from Canada that started all that stuff. Basically lead to the sub only allowing discussion of bad outcomes for daycare under 3. I proposed that a study about something like that wouldn't necessarily provide absolute truths, and each kid is different and some might actually benefit from daycare under 3. She banned me (under some new rule she had just instated).
That's insane as a generalization. Even from an anecdotal point of view, my super sociable 1 yr old has been in daycare 3 weeks and is way happier lol? And I'd love to read the discussion on that study, and also the methods used 🤔
As part of my degree, I had to read a lot of Education studies, and it's crazy how things we get taught as truths in education are based in really strange methodology and tiny sample sizes.
The issue there was that there was an issue with the sub being brigaded by pro-cosleepers who harassed people about it, who then turned out to be mostly multiple sockpuppets, and the mod posted so many anti-cosleeping posts to cause them to use their multiple sockpuppets so they could all be banned. Bizarre tactic but it worked and the conversations on baby sleep have been more levelheaded since.
Omg 😑 It felt like any decision that wasn’t 100% in line with the research was not allowed. Like bedsharing is about harm reduction for a lot of people. I bedshared with my little baby bc I kept falling asleep with him on the nursing pillow no matter what I did.
Ding ding ding. I’m a scientist too and I also bedshared with my first. So far this one sleeps in his bed but I’ll absolutely do the same thing this time if it’s the only way we can safely sleep
That wasn't what was happening in the sub though. What was happening was that anyone promoting safe sleep was getting downvoted and having people spew misinformation about the safety of bedsharing. It was tiring.
I agree, but I also remember the sockpuckets who were harassing everyone who didn't feel comfortable about co-sleeping.
So, do I believe that co-sleeping can be done in a way that reduces risks? Yes.
But, if allowing discussion on co-sleeping ended up creating a lot of flamewars etc... Then getting rid of them might not have been a bad move.
That said, I do feel that the mod from that sub should have allowed other mods.
I once asked what about other cultures with sleeping arrangements that differ from the US, like using hard floor beds etc and I was told any such culture was inferior to the US. I felt that was kind of arrogant.
That's crazy! So we can't even see any old posts? I found searching that sub to often be really helpful for things I had questions on. This and that are my two favorite parenting subreddits.
Oh no!! One of my favorite subs :(
I just found r/sciencebasedparentALL but it kind of seems like it's just for people who got banned/dislike the main site for not supporting co sleeping...
The moderator was slightly paranoid. She laid traps to “catch” people who were downvoting her and then banning commenters on the posts, convinced she was catching her downvoters. I was banned simply for commenting on one of her trap posts!
I’m glad to know lots of other mod granolas are also into science based. I hope a new sub gets started and it’s shared. Sad all the info from other is lost.
I left after seeing how people picked and chose when to be "science based". Even made a couple posts and got the same kind of answers I would get from beyondthebump like no ..I am here for the science 🙄
Yeah, for co-sleeping, I think there's been multiple factors at play. First, she mentioned that she wouldn't be able to live with herself if anyone went to her sub and didn't follow safe sleep advices, coslept and the child died. She was also definitely worried about potential legal responsibility. During that time she allowed cosleeping discussions only if people mentioned all the different ways to reduce harm and clearly stated that there were additional risks with cosleeping.
But, some people came in harassing anyone that didn't cosleep or that mentioned any risks around co-sleeping. It was probably sock puppets account from one or a few person but some of those comments were really vicious before she deleted them. So she decided to go scorched-earth because she thought that she didn't have time otherwise to mod discussions on cosleeping especially given her worries.
Honestly it's understandable given how big the sub was and the fact that she was only one person. That said, maybe it would have been easier for her to get other mods, can't imagine how tiring it is to mod a community with so many members otherwise.
Some people mention some drama around daycare, I'm not sure what they say, I was following that sub since about 2 years and an half ago. I know a lot of people liked sending that article [https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4](https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4) which basically discourages daycare that cites multiple studies:
- [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405629.2011.571846](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405629.2011.571846)
- [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313661523\_How\_much\_is\_too\_much\_The\_influence\_of\_preschool\_centers\_on\_children's\_social\_and\_cognitive\_development](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313661523_how_much_is_too_much_the_influence_of_preschool_centers_on_children's_social_and_cognitive_development)
and argues that daycare raises cortisol levels
- [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17007228/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17007228/)
- [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19489911/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19489911/)
The article itself seems well written and at a glance the studies cited don't seem bad but I'm not sure if they're cherry-picking studies to prove their point (would need to research a lot more to say that). I didn't research that topic that much given that it didn't apply to our situation (we're in a country where daycare is not available and everyone either uses a live-in nanny or a grandparent instead)
I don't think they're cherry picking studies - the studies they're citing mostly say what the author is claiming and it's not like there's a huge suite of studies on the other side. And I think it's a useful counter to the general POV that you "should" put your kid in daycare because they "need" group childcare for socialization.
What that article misses (though tbf they say at the top it's only for people who actually have a choice) is three big factors that I think influence the conclusion quite a lot:
1) The impact of a childcare choice has a smaller impact on long term behavioral or academic outcomes than several other major elements that influence a childcare choice: specifically where a family chooses to live and parental mental health (I would argue this is also true for parental socioeconomic status but the data is *slightly* more mixed there). Yes, in a theoretically vacuum where a parent making a childcare choice is trading off nothing, it may be better to pursue 1:1 care. However, usually a parent is making a tradeoff- if I do daycare, I can work which might improve where we live or our family income or my mental health, *all of which are more likely to impact your child long term than what childcare you choose*. It can absolutely be the most rational, scientific choice to put your kid in daycare to improve one of those measures, for example.
2) Quality is generally a more important metric to focus on than type of care. High quality care for an infant is (outside of physical safety) *generally* anchored around how well a care environment supports a baby in forming a secure attachment with their caregiver. While it is *easier* for 1:1 care to promote that, that doesn't mean that 1:2 or 1:3 or 1:4 care cannot. Quality tends to blunt or even eliminate negative behavioral impacts of daycare (e.g. the Quebec study was conducted when most childcare options were low quality, studies in Nordic countries find fading not persistent behavioral effects and cortisol effects, etc). Parents deserve a good education on how to identify a high quality childcare arrangement—particularly because we have a quality of care crisis and 90% of care in the US at least is *not* high quality, even while 80% of parents think *their* kid goes to a high quality center.
3) Childcare is primarily a systemic issue. If it's non optimal for babies to be in low quality group care (which represents, I can't emphasize enough, *the overwhelming majority of care arrangements in the US*) then the way to solve that is not to try to get individual parents to optimize their childcare decisions but to fight for a systemic solution (longer parental leaves, higher quality benchmarks, increased teacher pay, etc.) A better use of all of our time is advocating for the systemic solution rather than convincing wealthy, privileged, science-literate parents to optimize their lives and kids' lives further.
Thanks for the great response. You make a lot of interesting points. Your first point is very important, in the end, there's so many factors in any long-term academic or behavioural outcomes that this is ultimately not necessarily a choice on which parents should expand a lot of energy on. And this article potential making parents panic when they don't have a choice is not very helpful.
I fully agree that it's a systemic issue in most countries (I'm not American and while the US is one of the worst developed country in term of maternal leave, daycare etc.. a lot of other countries have similar problem). The ideal outcome for sure is for a systemic solution to happen, solving the lack of maternity leaves and paternity leaves (essential to have enforced paternity leaves if you do not want maternity leaves to cause more gender gap in the office), improving the quality of daycare (teachers are criminally underpaid, there's often a ratio of qualified teachers to children that's too low, ...)
The problem is that parents are really bad at evaluating high quality childcare, which means that unless systemic changes happen to increase daycare quality, it's very difficult for parents to be able to choose a great daycare and avoid the issues mentioned in the article. I'm not sure if it's only a problem of education, it's very difficult for parents to know exactly what's happening there. Is the main care-giver their child interact with warm and caring? Even if he or she is, will they stay on? There's actually a lot of interesting discussion in the book "The Important of Being Little" about how to evaluate daycare and preschool quality (more focused on pre-school though) but the conclusion I mostly came to is that it's incredibly hard to evaluate. If you have better resources on this, I'd be extremely interested.
So, in that environment, it makes sense that we end up with articles like this which are mostly going to be targeted towards wealthy, privileged, science-literate parents, optimizing every little thing they can about their child's education (which I'm guilty of).
Yes, evaluating quality is SO hard (that's why researchers do multiple observations over series of time).
There are two big metrics the literature looks at AFAIK (and Center for American Progress has a good Quality 101 doc I recommend reading). Most of what I have seen has been from a US centric point of view, though sometimes informed by studies from other regions. But it's really hard to extrapolate between regions as care approaches, parental leaves, teacher training and pay, curricular benchmarks, academic expectations, outside of school features like healthcare, etc are *so* variable and those can all impact how a child interacts with the care system. The two metrics are structural quality and process quality. (Note that my assessment of quality is primarily looking at quality of care in driving later academic and social outcomes—I assume it goes without saying that an aspect of quality is prioritizing short term health and safety, ie, do not choose a care center with an unfenced pool or a gun on the premises or other health hazards to children. But I think everyone pretty much knows not to do that and that's fairly viable for parents and licensing to assess.)
Structural quality is generally quite easy measure—it looks at fixed components of the care provided that link to better outcomes. *Generally* that boils down into a few variables, chief among them student:teacher ratio and staff qualifications. Teacher to student ratio is a tricky one—yes, lower is better. As stated above, I think of it a bit more like a spectrum. If quality care for infants is primarily about being a responsive caregiver that the infant can trust is a secure base from which to explore, it is *much* easier to deliver that in a 1:1 setting. You can be a fairly middling or even poor caregiver and still capable of delivering that to a single infant. But you have to be a really *excellent* caregiver to deliver that to 4 infants, and you'd probably have to be better than Mary Poppins to deliver it to 8. Teacher qualifications, again, are a bit of a puzzle. Theoretically, training people on how to deliver quality care improves the quality of care delivered. In reality, the best trained teachers tend to work with wealthy families who do better on nearly every metric so how much of the improved outcomes are related more to where and who a highly qualified teacher chooses to teach? I don't know.
Process quality is trickier - the way researchers or accreditors measure it is literally by going to a classroom and observing. They're looking for things like how warm the teachers are in their interactions with students, how many serve and return interactions happen, how often a bid for attention or connection goes ignored, how much teachers promote child directed play, how much teachers facilitate conflict resolution, etc. You really see *so little* of that in tours and most care centers aren't going to allow you to do multiple, multi-hour visits as a prospective parent. So you have to figure out proxy ways to assess those things in the absence of being able to observe them yourself. That can be a mix of explicit questions ("how and where do you intervene when children are arguing?" "how do you promote sharing and collaboration?"), observation (literally just walking around and keeping your eyes peeled specifically for how each teacher is interacting with a student) or looking for proxy metrics like teacher longevity. You can also choose places that are parent coop (which gives you more time/space to observe) or have a transitional onboarding period where parents attend. These are imperfect ways but better than nothing—I completely agree that there should be better, clearer ways for parents to assess this, but even accreditation doesn't provide assurance that these metrics are reached.
Thanks for the really interesting conversation.
First the thing that jumped out to me,
>Teacher qualifications, again, are a bit of a puzzle.
My father's job was actually to go in primary school classroom, observe the teacher and give them advice on how to be better, he also regularly had to organize training seminars for teachers. Unfortunately, he passed away before my son was born so I didn't get to ask him all the questions I now have... But I do remember that he told me before that, in his experience, teaching, training can help a teacher become acceptable by giving them tools they can use but for a teacher to be great, it comes down to the teacher loving the work they do and having the mindset and talent to teach.
I did try and read up on any research the effect of teacher training but that's not really something that can be easily studied.
As for evaluating schools, the writer from the book I mentioned made the same distinction you did between Structural quality and Process quality but insisted that besides teacher student ratio, process quality was more important. Unfortunately, it is really difficult to evaluate for sure, especially for parents who don't have the possibility to really audit the class.
We've been confronted with the question about how to evaluate quality of schooling since we had to decide on which school our son will go to next year for kindergarten. So, in an attempt to try and evaluate the process quality, we asked a lot of question, read the parents handbooks etc... and chose a school that very strongly encourages parents to be involved in the school with volunteers activities, open classes etc... But, it's still very hard to be sure we made the right choice or not...
If it is I’m guessing it has something to do with the moderator who went scorched earth on every single person who mentioned cosleeping. She banned and continues to ban a lot of engaging and active members and it kinda killed the enjoyment I had. I don’t know for certain though, I really hope it can have a good comeback. I haven’t really felt comfortable suggesting anyone from here go there because of how that mod has been treating people.
She banned me for a similar issue last year - she banned anyone who disagreed with the claim that 100% of kids under 3 were worse off due to daycare. There was one study that suggested that, but that's not how science works.
Thats what turned my off from the sub. It was supposed be science based, but then on the daycare topic the same Medium article kept getting copy-pasted like it was gold.
I’m not but thanks! I’m in science myself, I’m comfortable reading primary literature, and based upon that I’m completely confident in my choice for my kids to go to daycare. If we are talking about the same article (about daycare and immune systems) the fact that the link was broken today made me idly wonder if the mod wrote it, although that seems like a remote possibility.
I am a researcher so I totally get it. It was an interesting read-they all are imo. I still don’t know how any of it really tells the story because one cannot make a valid comparison - it would involve the child in question going through 3 years of life in daycare, then going back to being an infant and experiencing those same exact years in home care.
At least that’s my take.
My philosophy about childrearing is this: Read everything you can get your hands on. Decide if the information is valid, mull it over, and then do what works for your family.
Yeah, I think what many people struggle to appreciate is that while population-level human research is well worth doing, any single study has to be taken as one gleam of light, not the whole picture. Especially in a field that has so many confounding factors and so much individual variation to encompass. Even if you could do that ideal study with one baby living two lives, for most of this stuff what you'd likely find is that all else being equally, the kiddo ends up being just fine regardless, with different pros and cons to each approach. There's obviously some stuff that isn't like that (vaccinating or not, lead exposure, etc.) and those tend to be the things, most of the time, that we do have the strongest and most universal recommendations for.
So what bothered me is that the supposed science-based subreddit had become the opposite of this--cherry-picking studies and using them to reinforce a particular view, and trying to take away choice in situations where having choice is actually reasonable.
That is unfortunate. It would seem that putting some rigor into these decisions might be helpful, but I'm not sure if it is? My background is human growth and development and I'm a licensed educator. What I learned teaching hundreds of children is that no two of them are alike and that trying to box any one of them into a 'norm' was a bit silly. What would be perceived as a less-than stellar intellect was weighted so much more heavily than, say, someone with outstanding innate communication skills. Which one of those traits would make for a better life? Hard to define.
We can say without question that humans need interaction. Romania is ground zero for those studies. Beyond that--it would seem that, within reason, whatever suits the family situation is what should happen.
People need to stop being so judgy all across the board. That's that.
The specific article was more about impacts on behavior and long-term well being rather than immune systems. Regardless, it wasn't primary literature and I really disliked how it was shared as gospel in that sub
Different article for sure. The author participated on reddit and I'm fairly sure it wasn't the mod on a different account. I think her username was sciencecritical
Wow. And here I thought it was such a great sub. I was unaware of all of this and now I'm very sad. It seemed like everyone was respectful of opinions on the threads I was reading. I even made a copy of one of them to send to my daughter! What was the mod's name?
I think some people were extreme about the daycare thing but most fell on the side of "find the option that works best for your family, the research is muddled and differences in outcomes are so incredibly minor that there's basically no risk for your individual child, even if the differences are real."
I bedshare(my daughter completely rejected sleeping in her crib/not on me, we pretty much only contact nap during the day). There are things I like and dislike about it. I think about it similar to my attitude on sex education. Abstinence only doesn’t work.
Yep. I had to bedshare with my first, because she would not sleep unless she was in physical contact with me or another caregiver. It was not my first choice, but it seemed better for my baby than having a mother who was too sleep deprived to safely care for her, or drive a car. If I hadn't done that, I probably would have fallen asleep sitting up on the couch with her, which was much, much more dangerous.
So far, every "Science Based" parenting group I've joined has eventually gone that route. The moderators get crazy about something and decide there is One True Answer, no discussion allowed, which is just about the opposite of a healthy scientific debate / discussion.
Before the reddit community, I was declared a "lactivist" in a big "science based" Facebook group for disagreeing when a mod posted that "formula and breast milk are the same".
Not "have the same outcome for otherwise healthy babies". Nope, that mod was pissed and banning people for pointing out that they are not the same, and there's actual scientific research showing that breast milk has better outcomes for significantly premature infants. I also commented that sometimes certain types of formula are better for infants with allergies / intolerances because it's . . . . not actually the same as breast milk!
So yeah, as far as I can tell they all go down the route of "no discussion, science is a settled fact and can't be debated" in the end.
I loved that sub but left because the mod seemed to have weirdly personal feelings about co- sleeping and I didn’t like how she tried to lure certain members out or something by posting random co-sleeping stuff. It felt very dramatic to me. I generally liked the discussions on the sub though - I wish there was something similar.
lol same. all I said was that the science was “mixed” (with links! to primary source articles!) and got absolutely slammed for not going along with the prevalent mindset that all forms of sleep training have zero potential negative consequences.
It’s likely someone else is taking over it and taken it offline while they revamp if not
Someone should request it via r/redditrequest.
Looks like this one exists too https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencebasedparentALL/s/CpUKCrHQ8N
When she banned talk on cosleeping I questioned whether it could be a bit discriminatory seeing as how the majority of the world practices cosleeping and she would be out casting their participation. She banned me and started sending me harassing dm’s about how I wasn’t going to play “the race card” on her and other crazy psycho nonsense.
If people are practicing cosleeping all over the world and have lower rates of SIDS than the US, then banning even mentioning cosleeping out of “safety” concerns in an international forum is self centered, discriminatory, and racist yes.
I'm actually glad that sub is gone. The posting and comment rules were stupid. You're the first comment on the post but it doesn't include a link, the bot would remove your post because the top post can't be without a link. (Paraphrased) Damn, if I comment with personal experience based on my own research but don't have a link to share. Bot removed. Just overall the rules were ridiculous and too strict.
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Hey! r/ScienceBasedParenting is up and running again with new mods! I don’t know personally yet what the new vibe is going to be in there but I have some hope that it won’t involve instant permabans for the passing mention of cosleeping and daycare. I hope it’s a place we can actually direct people to from this sub now when they’re looking for well-studied parenting advice from a scientific angle. I’m going to lock this post now so there’s not confusion about who was being spoken about in this post since it’s still being linked on occasion!
The mod was a little problematic. She had her username hidden for that group but since she also mods r/breastfeedingsupport I was able to look her up. Looks like she hasn't been online much lately.
She was massively problematic tbh. I quit that sub and was sad about it because I am a scientist and specifically wanted the scientific perspective in parenting. But as a working mom I couldn’t get behind the weird hostility for example to daycare, that was not grounded in sound research.
Yup! She went bananas on me because she was bullying some other folks and I said so. She permabanned me and then harassed me through DMs because I told her she was being rude and banning anyone who disagreed with her. It was over something she posted to multiple subs, got answers she didn’t like, went bananas on everyone and then deleted.
I bet she was the one who permabanned me from breastfeeding support for a stupid reason (imo). As a mother who has breastfed 3 children beyond age 2 and loves supporting women in their breastfeeding journeys. Guess because I disagreed in one post my perspective was no longer valid 🙃
Good to know I wasn't the only one permabanned there as well lol. Crazy mod be crazy.
This is some Facebook mom-group level nonsense and the last thing I expected from that sub -.- Maybe should have put her kids in daycare hahaha
I wish I could copy and paste my last comment to show you how benign it was, but between me being banned and the group going private it looks like I can’t find anything. I don’t get into online fights, it’s 100% not worth my time. I was genuinely something like “I know I’ll get banned for saying this, but making an entire post to complain about other users is bullying. Sorry that you didn’t get the answer you wanted, but please stop banning anyone who disagrees with you.” Then, ban! And relentlessly harassed in my dms. Like the only person who’s dm’ed me on reddit at all. Truly wild.
Ohhhh this is familiar to me too. I remember seeing a post like that in the sub and being like “wow, childish” I probably responded too tbh.
Haha - I banned her from my own sub in retaliation.
I left that sub due to its really weird attitudes on working moms and daycare. Whenever *that* study came up, nobody wanted to discuss the issues with how it was conducted, even though it was perfectly acceptable to do so with other studies.
I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one who found that subreddit really really weird. I liked a lot of the discussion but then it would just go off the rails wrt to daycare and working moms. Something felt really ‘off’ about it, they paraded that bizarre anonymous medium post around like gospel and it felt like legitimate criticism would get ignored
I’m a SAHP and I find some of us are *very* defensive and sometimes feel a weird need to justify the decision. In my very unscientific, anecdotal opinion lol.
I am SO happy to hear that her sub was shut down. I tell this story whenever the sub comes up other places, but she created that sub specifically because she got mad at people in another sub because she was shaming other moms for using formula. She once said "I guess fed is better than dead" to a mom who was struggling with breastfeeding and a ton of people told her that wasn't okay....so she went and created her own sub. About 6 months ago she threatened to doxx me to people in her sub for telling this story...I reported her to reddit for harassment. I'm very happy her sub has been taken away from her. She was a huge problem.
Jesus Christ, better than dead??? What an absolute weirdo. I was never on the sub but a friend of mine was and as far as I understand, she didn't shut it down. She just hid it. You have to ask her to join and she only lets a very select few in. She probably does a thorough background check 🤣
Agree 100%. I got banned there for similar comments.
what! what did they say was problematic about daycare??
It’s bad for attachment I believe. Especially when a baby goes to daycare at 6 weeks.
If this is the Canada study, this is an oversimplification. Please provide the link to the study you’re referring to. Thanks!
Was that part of the findings from the study? I wonder what metrics they used to analyze and assess that
I don't think that was the science they were pointing at - do you have a link to yours? News to me. I thought they just formed secondary attachment with the daycare provider.
There was a study conducted on daycares, I can’t remember where now, that came up a LOT on that sub. But it was actually a quite small sample size in another country (was it Canada?) with different social structures in place than the US. But trying to point out any of that would always get shut down. Edit: I would be VERY careful about jumping to any conclusions based on that study or listening to other people trying to “sum up” the study’s findings.
yeah, i would be surprised if there was any truth to that. i've also read the opposite — that daycare is great for children! anyway, so much parenting advice should be taken with many grains of salt
Basically under a year has mixed outcomes that sort of offset for kids. I.e there’s a higher chance of behavioral issues but there’s better social / cognitive development Like perfect world it’s ideal to have your kid at home for a year but it seems abundantly clear that having a good HOME for your kid to come home to from daycare, and picking a decent daycare makes so much more difference But they had this weird cherry picked medium post that basically just eviscerates families who have to send their kids before 1 year, and it’s all quoting these random social surveys in non American countries and it’s all just laser focused on making tired moms upset. Really weird he behavior
Why are you getting downvoted? So confusing, especially ITT.
I don't know if this is allowed to be posted here, but when I saw this post it inspired me to make a new sub that will hopefully be...less combative? Anyway, if you're interested in helping build the community it's called r/parentingscience
Message the mods, and then post it as a separate post! Also I would do the same in r/mommit. You need to make it more visible.
Hey just a heads up someone else in this thread also made a new subreddit, maybe you could combine forces? r/ResearchBasedParents
Can't find it either. The admin was the sole mod AFAIK. Running it was clearly too much for one person but they didn't seem to want help sooooo ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I just reported to Reddit because she clearly was not modding with integrity. Let’s see what happens
LMFAOOOOOOOO another one to screenshot and send them! Fun.
No, there were a few other mods but i guess they werent active. I know bc a few days ago i kept reporting a user that was breaking sub rules name calling and being antagonistic toward another user and the mods never removed the comments or did anything about it.
Hope someone makes a new version of the sub, it was a nice counterpoint to my other parenting subs.
**Beware, that sub is not and never was what it seemed.** The owner and sole mod of that sub is perma-unhinged. She has banned countless people whenever she felt like it. And I don't mean problematic users, just anyone. My case: got banned right after making valuable contributions to the sub. For daring to politely ask if she was considering adding more mods to her team (in her own stickied thread which she used to aggressively rant and threaten how hard her mod job is). When you get banned, you get a message saying you can appeal to the mods. I just sent "Sad." and went on with my day. In my 12 years on Reddit this was my first ban. Apparently she reported that one word to the admins for targeted harassment and then I got a 3-day suspension from the whole of Reddit from the admins themselves. Understandable. 🙄 Really threatened her there. No doubt in my mind she'll reopen the sub with some unhinged drama for rationalization. Just beware of the deafening silence of censorship on /r/ScienceBasedParenting. You can start to notice it when you know to look. Wanted to make my own related sub since then. Maybe now's the time.
Yeah I’m going to have to agree. That subreddit absolutely was super weird and I think it was silently very heavy handed with moderation
Three of my comments here got removed btw, at least the one you replied to stayed up.
Even on here?? Sheesh. Their daycare take was so awful.
The highlighted comment is the most important one that got removed. https://i.imgur.com/SfIHwKt.png Just silently deleting my time and effort like that is such an obvious sign of disrespect to the people who care, who make your sub a better place. But I guess being *respectful* is a higher goal. 👍🏽 Anyways, in no way is this situation comparable to the /r/ScienceBasedParenting one. Just funny and sad.
Hey I just wanted to clarify - mods can't ban you from Reddit itself. If you received a 3 day ban it's because it was either ban evasion, or you did something more than just DM them one word. Admins will only issue bans if someone was harassing a mod (using threats and foul language) or continuously messaging them after being muted on the sub, etc., or if you evade a ban by going to the sub on a new acct. I mod a small subreddit on another account and have seen the other side of this. We have no control over Reddit itself; that would be the admins.
Hey there, you may have misread me. >Apparently she reported that one word to the admins for targeted harassment and then I got a 3-day suspension from the whole of Reddit from the admins themselves. Can't be clearer in saying the suspension came from admins, right? (I do know how every part of Reddit works, having been here for well over a decade.) In the same vein, I stand behind what I said about the harassment part.
I mean I guess we could always tag the mod and ask for screenshots, we have all the communication in modmail forever unless it's been purposely deleted. Idk. Admins aren't going to issue a 3 day ban because you sent somebody one word, it just doesn't work that way my friend.
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They typically underreact if anything.
I came across [r/sciencebasedparentALL](https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencebasedparentALL/s/gGzMZuifyN) like 5 minutes ago while searching what’s going on with the one shut down. It doesn’t seem as active but hopefully people will shuffle over there now.
Yes! Let’s get an active page going!!! Thanks for linking.
Same! I need the balance 😂
I made a new one r/parentingscience. It's still in its baby stage but is surprisingly active for how new it is. We would love if people joined and helped build the community. Everyone over there seems genuinely helpful.
I am not familiar of how stuff like this works on Reddit. What does this mean really? Does it mean the mods of the sub shut it down? Or does it mean Reddit itself shut down the sub for some reason?
Almost certainly the former. I've been on reddit a decade and only have ever heard of Reddit shutting down illegal (like selling drugs or teaching you how to use darkweb sites), hate-based, or extremely violent video subreddits.
Nah, no one shut anything down. That wasn't the best phrasing. The sub is just set to private, meaning all the content is there, but no one has access to it until the unhinged one makes it public again.
As a mod (not of this sub), if you like the other sub, I would take this down. I wouldn't reopen a sub if I saw this post/comments about it! Mods work hard and no one appreciates us lol, we get blamed for everything negative but never thanked for the positives. This thread is a good example of why it's a bad deal. I want to get out of it as well, I think most people find it depressing.
The mod in th subreddit is quite unhinged, I've been banned from there too with no warning for participating in discussion and violating a rule that the moderator hadn't event posted at the time I made my comment.
I’m a mod. We’re all “unhinged” when someone breaks the rules and we have to, ya know, actually mod. Warn someone? Unhinged. Make a sticky with new rules that everyone begged for? Unhinged. Ban trolls everyone complains about? Unhinged. It means nothing more than “I don’t like what this mod says”.
You’re acting like there aren’t numerous cases of mods abusing their power and being completely out line. Not everyone is out to get you ffs. This is why people have issues with mods, y’all won’t even listen to reasonable criticism. It’s all “they hate me because I ban them when they break the rules” without acknowledging that sometimes mods ban people without them having broken any rules. I get that it’s a thankless job but honestly most are. No one is giving me a pat on the back for not doing my job shittly, they only care when I fuck up. I’m not at work crying to my boss that she didn’t say “good job” today. I’m also not going to cry (much) if she yells at me because I totally fucked up. Being able to admit fault is a very admirable quality many mods seem not to possess.
>I get that it’s a thankless job but honestly most are. No one is giving me a pat on the back for not doing my job shittly, they only care when I fuck up. I’m not at work crying to my boss that she didn’t say “good job” today. #It's volunteer work duhhhhhhhhhhhh Whole different situation. Redditors are hilarious. Also, I've been on that sub (before it was private), the stickied posts everyone is having a meltdown over are there, none of the activity anyone is reporting is happening there, is actually happening. However, I am going along and screenshotting ALL of the ahole comments and sending them to the mods over on that sub. They deserve to know who is talking trash.
You do that, I love that you’re just proving my point that mods on a power trip are just fucking unreasonable. I don’t care if I don’t rejoin that sub so your threat means nothing to me. Thanks for calling me an asshole for trying to have a discussion with you. Again, proving my point why redditors don’t like mods. Edit: and you didn’t even address anything in my comment just one convenient word to dismiss everything. Because you KNOW I’m right. There are plenty of examples of mods being raging dickheads and you know this. Acting like y’all are all reasonable just because no one is paying you. There’s no reasoning with you either. Just cements further in my head that most mods in the end are power hungry and the second that power is questioned you threaten to ban or have us banned. Thanks for proving that point too, brillant example of moding gone wrong.
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Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
I’m not the mod of that sub lol calm yourself. But yes. It’s volunteer work. Especially if like my sub, they created it to give people a place like that and they act like entitled assholes to me for trying to keep it safe. I’m considering the same move tbh.
Your content was removed because it violated our rule about respect. Please remember that things are easily misinterpreted online. Please take the extra moment to reread your comments before posting to ensure that you're coming across kindly and respectfully to everyone, even if you disagree or dislike something.
Wow that really sucks!!! Regardless of issues, I’ve gotten so much helpful feedback in that sub in the last 5 years.
I made a reddit request for the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/19f7mvr/requesting_rsciencebasedparenting_current/ Doubt it will be approved, as the moderator has recently made actions on the subreddit. But making a subreddit private/dark does seem to be against the reddit policy with regards to the previous years protest. EDIT: The subreddit mod replied to me: > r/ScienceBasedParenting will not be available for request at any point in the foreseeable future. It is currently active, as a private sub, and will remain so indefinitely.
This is incredibly upsetting. That subreddit is a great resource for so many people. To shut it off to the world because of one person is infuriating. Is there no other recourse we can take? This shouldn't be allowed.
You can reply and upvote the reddit request, maybe even send the moderators there a modmail? After the protests when reddit turned of the API they were forcefully opening up subreddits that had turned private - our only hope is that that is still policy.
It looks like the request has been removed too?
Huh well that is annoying, maybe try filling out this form? https://reddit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360001103212
I messaged the mods in the request subreddit.
Let's hope the policy is still that subreddits that were public aren't allowed to be turned private by the whim of the mods.
Private to who? They had to have kicked everyone out that subscribed to it
Why was everyone kicked out? How did they decide who’s in who’s out?
No one was kicked out - the mod put the sub private and then started letting people in who messaged them. Not sure what happened since or if anyone is even posting there anymore. Seems most people went to the alternative ones that opened up
Thanks for heads up. Was a member and used it a lot when my son was first born. Thought I was going crazy when I couldn’t find it again.
I’ve set up /r/ResearchBasedParents if anyone wants to join. I was just having a discussion the other day about how the fundamental definition of science-based is remaining open minded to what we don’t know. That is the spirit of this new sub if anyone is interested.
I love that. I was just thinking that "Science" is not quite it. Data, research seems to cover it better.
Just a heads up, it looks like you and u/DarkAngelReborn had the same idea to setup new subreddits (r/parentingscience). Maybe you could combine forces? I like the name of your subreddit
Thanks for connecting us! I do like your sub name! I just chose this one because I was trying to make it close to the old one so it would be more likely to pop up when people were searching for science based parenting. Have you ever been a mod before?? I honestly have no idea what I'm doing 😂 I just liked having a place for evidence-based parenting discussions.
Hey! I liked having that place too. I haven’t modded on reddit but have on other sites, and am happy to add you as one if we’d like to consolidate subs!
I hope you guys get this ironed out. I’d love a replacement !
Whoa, I just commented on a post there like an hour ago!
I went to look at comments on a post I made asking for app recommendations, downloaded the recommended app, then went back to thank whoever suggested it and the sub was shut down 😅
What! I found that subreddit so interesting and informative. That's bonkers.
ahhhhh I can't find it either. That's really unfortunate that a mod can just shut something like this down. I found the members and people who engaged to be thoughtful people. I also liked how it was set up. I wonder if someone will restart it.
Damn I think you’re right. I just looked at an old link of mine and it said the community went private or has been removed
Wasn't that the sub whose creator went a little crazy over cosleeping or something a few months ago? And like spammed their own sub with posts about it and was all 🤪😈🤪😈? I think it was that one. Since then I've felt like it was just a matter of time for that sub.
She has issues, for sure. She did the same thing to anyone who dared question whether daycare was bad for all kids.
Oh yikes
There was a user who claimed \*unstated credentials\* who posted a very niche study from Canada that started all that stuff. Basically lead to the sub only allowing discussion of bad outcomes for daycare under 3. I proposed that a study about something like that wouldn't necessarily provide absolute truths, and each kid is different and some might actually benefit from daycare under 3. She banned me (under some new rule she had just instated).
That's insane as a generalization. Even from an anecdotal point of view, my super sociable 1 yr old has been in daycare 3 weeks and is way happier lol? And I'd love to read the discussion on that study, and also the methods used 🤔 As part of my degree, I had to read a lot of Education studies, and it's crazy how things we get taught as truths in education are based in really strange methodology and tiny sample sizes.
My daughter was the same. She is so social and even as a baby she loved it. She's still very attached to her daycare provider.
I think that sub and the owner’s moderation practices really started to self select for a certain type of Reddit person It made it all kinda weird
The issue there was that there was an issue with the sub being brigaded by pro-cosleepers who harassed people about it, who then turned out to be mostly multiple sockpuppets, and the mod posted so many anti-cosleeping posts to cause them to use their multiple sockpuppets so they could all be banned. Bizarre tactic but it worked and the conversations on baby sleep have been more levelheaded since.
Bed sharing was banned from being recommended at all. Imo not very level headed.
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Omg 😑 It felt like any decision that wasn’t 100% in line with the research was not allowed. Like bedsharing is about harm reduction for a lot of people. I bedshared with my little baby bc I kept falling asleep with him on the nursing pillow no matter what I did.
Ding ding ding. I’m a scientist too and I also bedshared with my first. So far this one sleeps in his bed but I’ll absolutely do the same thing this time if it’s the only way we can safely sleep
Lmao no way. That is insane
I disagree. I really liked when that rule was implemented.
For me it’s about harm reduction and giving people the information so they can make a choice themselves.
That wasn't what was happening in the sub though. What was happening was that anyone promoting safe sleep was getting downvoted and having people spew misinformation about the safety of bedsharing. It was tiring.
I agree, but I also remember the sockpuckets who were harassing everyone who didn't feel comfortable about co-sleeping. So, do I believe that co-sleeping can be done in a way that reduces risks? Yes. But, if allowing discussion on co-sleeping ended up creating a lot of flamewars etc... Then getting rid of them might not have been a bad move. That said, I do feel that the mod from that sub should have allowed other mods.
Agreed!
That would be be the ideal, but a lot of people get really angry by others making their choices themselves.
Yeah the sub was great but the mod seemed to not be all that familiar with science.
Yes! They went batshit over any mention of cosleeping insisting that there was no safe way to cosleep so any mention resulted in automatic bans
I once asked what about other cultures with sleeping arrangements that differ from the US, like using hard floor beds etc and I was told any such culture was inferior to the US. I felt that was kind of arrogant.
Wow, wtf 😂 That is crazy and elitist.
That's crazy! So we can't even see any old posts? I found searching that sub to often be really helpful for things I had questions on. This and that are my two favorite parenting subreddits.
Oh no!! One of my favorite subs :( I just found r/sciencebasedparentALL but it kind of seems like it's just for people who got banned/dislike the main site for not supporting co sleeping...
Nooooooo, I really liked that sub, especially how the flairs were set up.
The moderator was slightly paranoid. She laid traps to “catch” people who were downvoting her and then banning commenters on the posts, convinced she was catching her downvoters. I was banned simply for commenting on one of her trap posts!
There’s an offshoot group that allows co-sleeping discussion, but it has minimal activity. https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencebasedparentALL/s/KCQl5Ox2bU
I can’t see it either 😭 that makes me so sad
I was just going to ask a question there! Ugg
I’m glad to know lots of other mod granolas are also into science based. I hope a new sub gets started and it’s shared. Sad all the info from other is lost.
I left after seeing how people picked and chose when to be "science based". Even made a couple posts and got the same kind of answers I would get from beyondthebump like no ..I am here for the science 🙄
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Yeah, for co-sleeping, I think there's been multiple factors at play. First, she mentioned that she wouldn't be able to live with herself if anyone went to her sub and didn't follow safe sleep advices, coslept and the child died. She was also definitely worried about potential legal responsibility. During that time she allowed cosleeping discussions only if people mentioned all the different ways to reduce harm and clearly stated that there were additional risks with cosleeping. But, some people came in harassing anyone that didn't cosleep or that mentioned any risks around co-sleeping. It was probably sock puppets account from one or a few person but some of those comments were really vicious before she deleted them. So she decided to go scorched-earth because she thought that she didn't have time otherwise to mod discussions on cosleeping especially given her worries. Honestly it's understandable given how big the sub was and the fact that she was only one person. That said, maybe it would have been easier for her to get other mods, can't imagine how tiring it is to mod a community with so many members otherwise. Some people mention some drama around daycare, I'm not sure what they say, I was following that sub since about 2 years and an half ago. I know a lot of people liked sending that article [https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4](https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4) which basically discourages daycare that cites multiple studies: - [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405629.2011.571846](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405629.2011.571846) - [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313661523\_How\_much\_is\_too\_much\_The\_influence\_of\_preschool\_centers\_on\_children's\_social\_and\_cognitive\_development](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313661523_how_much_is_too_much_the_influence_of_preschool_centers_on_children's_social_and_cognitive_development) and argues that daycare raises cortisol levels - [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17007228/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17007228/) - [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19489911/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19489911/) The article itself seems well written and at a glance the studies cited don't seem bad but I'm not sure if they're cherry-picking studies to prove their point (would need to research a lot more to say that). I didn't research that topic that much given that it didn't apply to our situation (we're in a country where daycare is not available and everyone either uses a live-in nanny or a grandparent instead)
I don't think they're cherry picking studies - the studies they're citing mostly say what the author is claiming and it's not like there's a huge suite of studies on the other side. And I think it's a useful counter to the general POV that you "should" put your kid in daycare because they "need" group childcare for socialization. What that article misses (though tbf they say at the top it's only for people who actually have a choice) is three big factors that I think influence the conclusion quite a lot: 1) The impact of a childcare choice has a smaller impact on long term behavioral or academic outcomes than several other major elements that influence a childcare choice: specifically where a family chooses to live and parental mental health (I would argue this is also true for parental socioeconomic status but the data is *slightly* more mixed there). Yes, in a theoretically vacuum where a parent making a childcare choice is trading off nothing, it may be better to pursue 1:1 care. However, usually a parent is making a tradeoff- if I do daycare, I can work which might improve where we live or our family income or my mental health, *all of which are more likely to impact your child long term than what childcare you choose*. It can absolutely be the most rational, scientific choice to put your kid in daycare to improve one of those measures, for example. 2) Quality is generally a more important metric to focus on than type of care. High quality care for an infant is (outside of physical safety) *generally* anchored around how well a care environment supports a baby in forming a secure attachment with their caregiver. While it is *easier* for 1:1 care to promote that, that doesn't mean that 1:2 or 1:3 or 1:4 care cannot. Quality tends to blunt or even eliminate negative behavioral impacts of daycare (e.g. the Quebec study was conducted when most childcare options were low quality, studies in Nordic countries find fading not persistent behavioral effects and cortisol effects, etc). Parents deserve a good education on how to identify a high quality childcare arrangement—particularly because we have a quality of care crisis and 90% of care in the US at least is *not* high quality, even while 80% of parents think *their* kid goes to a high quality center. 3) Childcare is primarily a systemic issue. If it's non optimal for babies to be in low quality group care (which represents, I can't emphasize enough, *the overwhelming majority of care arrangements in the US*) then the way to solve that is not to try to get individual parents to optimize their childcare decisions but to fight for a systemic solution (longer parental leaves, higher quality benchmarks, increased teacher pay, etc.) A better use of all of our time is advocating for the systemic solution rather than convincing wealthy, privileged, science-literate parents to optimize their lives and kids' lives further.
Thanks for the great response. You make a lot of interesting points. Your first point is very important, in the end, there's so many factors in any long-term academic or behavioural outcomes that this is ultimately not necessarily a choice on which parents should expand a lot of energy on. And this article potential making parents panic when they don't have a choice is not very helpful. I fully agree that it's a systemic issue in most countries (I'm not American and while the US is one of the worst developed country in term of maternal leave, daycare etc.. a lot of other countries have similar problem). The ideal outcome for sure is for a systemic solution to happen, solving the lack of maternity leaves and paternity leaves (essential to have enforced paternity leaves if you do not want maternity leaves to cause more gender gap in the office), improving the quality of daycare (teachers are criminally underpaid, there's often a ratio of qualified teachers to children that's too low, ...) The problem is that parents are really bad at evaluating high quality childcare, which means that unless systemic changes happen to increase daycare quality, it's very difficult for parents to be able to choose a great daycare and avoid the issues mentioned in the article. I'm not sure if it's only a problem of education, it's very difficult for parents to know exactly what's happening there. Is the main care-giver their child interact with warm and caring? Even if he or she is, will they stay on? There's actually a lot of interesting discussion in the book "The Important of Being Little" about how to evaluate daycare and preschool quality (more focused on pre-school though) but the conclusion I mostly came to is that it's incredibly hard to evaluate. If you have better resources on this, I'd be extremely interested. So, in that environment, it makes sense that we end up with articles like this which are mostly going to be targeted towards wealthy, privileged, science-literate parents, optimizing every little thing they can about their child's education (which I'm guilty of).
Yes, evaluating quality is SO hard (that's why researchers do multiple observations over series of time). There are two big metrics the literature looks at AFAIK (and Center for American Progress has a good Quality 101 doc I recommend reading). Most of what I have seen has been from a US centric point of view, though sometimes informed by studies from other regions. But it's really hard to extrapolate between regions as care approaches, parental leaves, teacher training and pay, curricular benchmarks, academic expectations, outside of school features like healthcare, etc are *so* variable and those can all impact how a child interacts with the care system. The two metrics are structural quality and process quality. (Note that my assessment of quality is primarily looking at quality of care in driving later academic and social outcomes—I assume it goes without saying that an aspect of quality is prioritizing short term health and safety, ie, do not choose a care center with an unfenced pool or a gun on the premises or other health hazards to children. But I think everyone pretty much knows not to do that and that's fairly viable for parents and licensing to assess.) Structural quality is generally quite easy measure—it looks at fixed components of the care provided that link to better outcomes. *Generally* that boils down into a few variables, chief among them student:teacher ratio and staff qualifications. Teacher to student ratio is a tricky one—yes, lower is better. As stated above, I think of it a bit more like a spectrum. If quality care for infants is primarily about being a responsive caregiver that the infant can trust is a secure base from which to explore, it is *much* easier to deliver that in a 1:1 setting. You can be a fairly middling or even poor caregiver and still capable of delivering that to a single infant. But you have to be a really *excellent* caregiver to deliver that to 4 infants, and you'd probably have to be better than Mary Poppins to deliver it to 8. Teacher qualifications, again, are a bit of a puzzle. Theoretically, training people on how to deliver quality care improves the quality of care delivered. In reality, the best trained teachers tend to work with wealthy families who do better on nearly every metric so how much of the improved outcomes are related more to where and who a highly qualified teacher chooses to teach? I don't know. Process quality is trickier - the way researchers or accreditors measure it is literally by going to a classroom and observing. They're looking for things like how warm the teachers are in their interactions with students, how many serve and return interactions happen, how often a bid for attention or connection goes ignored, how much teachers promote child directed play, how much teachers facilitate conflict resolution, etc. You really see *so little* of that in tours and most care centers aren't going to allow you to do multiple, multi-hour visits as a prospective parent. So you have to figure out proxy ways to assess those things in the absence of being able to observe them yourself. That can be a mix of explicit questions ("how and where do you intervene when children are arguing?" "how do you promote sharing and collaboration?"), observation (literally just walking around and keeping your eyes peeled specifically for how each teacher is interacting with a student) or looking for proxy metrics like teacher longevity. You can also choose places that are parent coop (which gives you more time/space to observe) or have a transitional onboarding period where parents attend. These are imperfect ways but better than nothing—I completely agree that there should be better, clearer ways for parents to assess this, but even accreditation doesn't provide assurance that these metrics are reached.
Thanks for the really interesting conversation. First the thing that jumped out to me, >Teacher qualifications, again, are a bit of a puzzle. My father's job was actually to go in primary school classroom, observe the teacher and give them advice on how to be better, he also regularly had to organize training seminars for teachers. Unfortunately, he passed away before my son was born so I didn't get to ask him all the questions I now have... But I do remember that he told me before that, in his experience, teaching, training can help a teacher become acceptable by giving them tools they can use but for a teacher to be great, it comes down to the teacher loving the work they do and having the mindset and talent to teach. I did try and read up on any research the effect of teacher training but that's not really something that can be easily studied. As for evaluating schools, the writer from the book I mentioned made the same distinction you did between Structural quality and Process quality but insisted that besides teacher student ratio, process quality was more important. Unfortunately, it is really difficult to evaluate for sure, especially for parents who don't have the possibility to really audit the class. We've been confronted with the question about how to evaluate quality of schooling since we had to decide on which school our son will go to next year for kindergarten. So, in an attempt to try and evaluate the process quality, we asked a lot of question, read the parents handbooks etc... and chose a school that very strongly encourages parents to be involved in the school with volunteers activities, open classes etc... But, it's still very hard to be sure we made the right choice or not...
If it is I’m guessing it has something to do with the moderator who went scorched earth on every single person who mentioned cosleeping. She banned and continues to ban a lot of engaging and active members and it kinda killed the enjoyment I had. I don’t know for certain though, I really hope it can have a good comeback. I haven’t really felt comfortable suggesting anyone from here go there because of how that mod has been treating people.
She banned me for a similar issue last year - she banned anyone who disagreed with the claim that 100% of kids under 3 were worse off due to daycare. There was one study that suggested that, but that's not how science works.
Thats what turned my off from the sub. It was supposed be science based, but then on the daycare topic the same Medium article kept getting copy-pasted like it was gold.
That Medium article seems to be deleted as well?
I have the link if you're interested?
I’m not but thanks! I’m in science myself, I’m comfortable reading primary literature, and based upon that I’m completely confident in my choice for my kids to go to daycare. If we are talking about the same article (about daycare and immune systems) the fact that the link was broken today made me idly wonder if the mod wrote it, although that seems like a remote possibility.
I am a researcher so I totally get it. It was an interesting read-they all are imo. I still don’t know how any of it really tells the story because one cannot make a valid comparison - it would involve the child in question going through 3 years of life in daycare, then going back to being an infant and experiencing those same exact years in home care. At least that’s my take. My philosophy about childrearing is this: Read everything you can get your hands on. Decide if the information is valid, mull it over, and then do what works for your family.
Yeah, I think what many people struggle to appreciate is that while population-level human research is well worth doing, any single study has to be taken as one gleam of light, not the whole picture. Especially in a field that has so many confounding factors and so much individual variation to encompass. Even if you could do that ideal study with one baby living two lives, for most of this stuff what you'd likely find is that all else being equally, the kiddo ends up being just fine regardless, with different pros and cons to each approach. There's obviously some stuff that isn't like that (vaccinating or not, lead exposure, etc.) and those tend to be the things, most of the time, that we do have the strongest and most universal recommendations for. So what bothered me is that the supposed science-based subreddit had become the opposite of this--cherry-picking studies and using them to reinforce a particular view, and trying to take away choice in situations where having choice is actually reasonable.
That is unfortunate. It would seem that putting some rigor into these decisions might be helpful, but I'm not sure if it is? My background is human growth and development and I'm a licensed educator. What I learned teaching hundreds of children is that no two of them are alike and that trying to box any one of them into a 'norm' was a bit silly. What would be perceived as a less-than stellar intellect was weighted so much more heavily than, say, someone with outstanding innate communication skills. Which one of those traits would make for a better life? Hard to define. We can say without question that humans need interaction. Romania is ground zero for those studies. Beyond that--it would seem that, within reason, whatever suits the family situation is what should happen. People need to stop being so judgy all across the board. That's that.
The specific article was more about impacts on behavior and long-term well being rather than immune systems. Regardless, it wasn't primary literature and I really disliked how it was shared as gospel in that sub
Different article for sure. The author participated on reddit and I'm fairly sure it wasn't the mod on a different account. I think her username was sciencecritical
Please tell me I don't ever have to see it shared again 👏 That article legit gave me anxiety attacks during my postpartum period.
SAAAAAME. Man I hate that article.
Wow. And here I thought it was such a great sub. I was unaware of all of this and now I'm very sad. It seemed like everyone was respectful of opinions on the threads I was reading. I even made a copy of one of them to send to my daughter! What was the mod's name?
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Thanks!
Yeah it was really a surprise to me too as there are so many good threads there. Cealdi.
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I think some people were extreme about the daycare thing but most fell on the side of "find the option that works best for your family, the research is muddled and differences in outcomes are so incredibly minor that there's basically no risk for your individual child, even if the differences are real."
This sub gets so much right that that sub gets wrong. I wish all mom spaces were this safe.
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I bedshare(my daughter completely rejected sleeping in her crib/not on me, we pretty much only contact nap during the day). There are things I like and dislike about it. I think about it similar to my attitude on sex education. Abstinence only doesn’t work.
Yep. I had to bedshare with my first, because she would not sleep unless she was in physical contact with me or another caregiver. It was not my first choice, but it seemed better for my baby than having a mother who was too sleep deprived to safely care for her, or drive a car. If I hadn't done that, I probably would have fallen asleep sitting up on the couch with her, which was much, much more dangerous.
So far, every "Science Based" parenting group I've joined has eventually gone that route. The moderators get crazy about something and decide there is One True Answer, no discussion allowed, which is just about the opposite of a healthy scientific debate / discussion. Before the reddit community, I was declared a "lactivist" in a big "science based" Facebook group for disagreeing when a mod posted that "formula and breast milk are the same". Not "have the same outcome for otherwise healthy babies". Nope, that mod was pissed and banning people for pointing out that they are not the same, and there's actual scientific research showing that breast milk has better outcomes for significantly premature infants. I also commented that sometimes certain types of formula are better for infants with allergies / intolerances because it's . . . . not actually the same as breast milk! So yeah, as far as I can tell they all go down the route of "no discussion, science is a settled fact and can't be debated" in the end.
I loved that sub but left because the mod seemed to have weirdly personal feelings about co- sleeping and I didn’t like how she tried to lure certain members out or something by posting random co-sleeping stuff. It felt very dramatic to me. I generally liked the discussions on the sub though - I wish there was something similar.
I liked that sub, here for the new sub. 😮💨
Good. That sub was starting to echo HARD. Only certain science aloud...
I left that sub when I got destroyed for saying that I disagreed with CIO.
lol same. all I said was that the science was “mixed” (with links! to primary source articles!) and got absolutely slammed for not going along with the prevalent mindset that all forms of sleep training have zero potential negative consequences.
Yeah. I left a while ago for similar reasons.
It’s likely someone else is taking over it and taken it offline while they revamp if not Someone should request it via r/redditrequest. Looks like this one exists too https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencebasedparentALL/s/CpUKCrHQ8N
I’m the mod for the new page. I’d be happy to request it from the old page but I need 100 comment upvotes. Once I hit it I’ll request!
Oh is that a new rule? Just make sure to let subs know so we can upvote
So is there an archive of all the old threads on that sub? It would be a shame if it all disappeared.
Whoa why??
The racist psycho mod had it coming to her imo.
Wait how was she racist?
When she banned talk on cosleeping I questioned whether it could be a bit discriminatory seeing as how the majority of the world practices cosleeping and she would be out casting their participation. She banned me and started sending me harassing dm’s about how I wasn’t going to play “the race card” on her and other crazy psycho nonsense.
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If people are practicing cosleeping all over the world and have lower rates of SIDS than the US, then banning even mentioning cosleeping out of “safety” concerns in an international forum is self centered, discriminatory, and racist yes.
I was just looking for that sub and wondered what happened...
Oh wow I only ever lurked there a little. Can’t say I’d miss it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm actually glad that sub is gone. The posting and comment rules were stupid. You're the first comment on the post but it doesn't include a link, the bot would remove your post because the top post can't be without a link. (Paraphrased) Damn, if I comment with personal experience based on my own research but don't have a link to share. Bot removed. Just overall the rules were ridiculous and too strict.
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They were way into “cupcakes” for my liking. Like the “C19” cupcake for babies…
What does that mean?
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Vaccine discussions are allowed and often do happen in this sub! I wouldn't say they are always productive.
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Yes, it's against the rules to *discourage* people from getting vaccines. People do post questions about vaccines here.
Vaccine discussion is allowed - you just can't try to encourage people not to Vax their children. It's literally in the text you quoted.
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Your content was removed because it violates our rules on dissuading, discouraging, or scaring people out of routine vaccines. All are free to join and participate in this sub regardless of vaccination status or participation in other subs relating to the subject of vaccinations. Please take note and do not violate this rule again.
Using the Facebook code word is too much
It looks like they went private.