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siduri comments on Science: Do It Yourself - Less Wrong
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Parenting advice of earlier generations is terrifying. They used to tell people not to cuddle their babies! That they'd be actively harming the kids by encouraging dependence!
Fortunately, it seems that in practice caregivers (read: mothers) largely ignored this advice. They still cuddled their babies; they just felt weak and ashamed as they did so.
For all we know, it's not that unlikely that they were right, or at least that cuddling isn't strictly better than not cuddling (either it doesn't make a difference, or each has consequences we would consider as beneficial and consequences we would consider harmful).
(disclaimer: I cuddle my baby. So far he hasn't killed millions of jews, but he's only a few months old, so it may not be a significant datapoint)
No, actually, we have substantial evidence now that babies need skin-to-skin contact to thrive. Because the maternal instinct is very strong in this direction (for a good reason) the data about what happens to babies who are not cuddled mostly comes from orphanages. It's a very sad answer.
OK, that probably should have been "for all I know" :P
Well, not touching babies will cause serious issues; I don't know if cuddling per se is required.