Is Sleep Training Advice Just Gaslighting Parents?

Macall Gordon, M.A.
Jul 18
6 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Next time you worry that you’re doing a crappy job on sleep, ask yourself where you got that idea.

Parents are stressed about sleep. It’s true. Generations of new parents have wondered how they will survive those early months of disrupted nighttime sleep. This isn't new. What is new is the way expert advice often ends up gaslighting parents, making them question their instincts, their worth, and every move they make.

In addition to sleep deprivation, they're desperately worried because they have been told that if they don’t get their child sleeping well practically from birth, their child will be forever ruined, or the parent will still be rocking their pre-teen to sleep. Parents aren't just worried; they have been told to worry.

Minefields and contradictions

How many of these well-meaning pearls of wisdom have you heard?

“Don’t cosleep or they’ll never leave.”

“Don’t rock/hold/nurse that newborn to sleep or they will be dependent on it.”

“Don’t pick them up when they cry, or they’ll never learn to self-soothe.”

The way that most sleep training advice is written, you’d think that getting a baby down “drowsy but awake” or “sleeping through the night” is the most important thing a parent will ever, ever do --- and there will be serious, life-long consequences if you don't.

Parenting is portrayed as a minefield of avoidable, but irrevocable mistakes. Make one false move, and you’re toast.

Advice is also full of maddening contradictions:

“Babies are malleable, but they also can develop habits that you can’t ever, ever break.”
“Be super responsive to build the brain and attachment, but at night, you'd better not respond to cries because then you’re actually the problem (or you’re weak) and they'll never learn to self-soothe.”
“You know your child best, so trust your instincts, but also, don’t, because they’re definitely going to be weak/uninformed/wrong. So, listen to the experts who really know.”

And they use the brain to hook you. Jen Macvarish, in her book Neuroparenting: The Expert Invasion of Family Life, suggests that:

“Neuroscience gets invoked to support two rather opposite messages: the plasticity of the developing brain and the danger of inflicting irreversible harm.”

For example, sleep experts strongly warn parents about the lasting negative effects of poor sleep on the infant brain and how "bad habits" can become ingrained and impossible to change.

However, when they start talking about why parents need to start sleep training early, they emphasize how malleable a baby's brain is and how easy it is to change patterns.

I'm sorry, what? It can’t be both.

No wonder parents feel a little nuts.

The use of research to scare parents into action

When it comes to sleep, advice leans heavily on research to convince parents that failing to sleep train will have undesirable consequences:

“Sleep problems are dangerous and will persist long-term if you don't do something now."

“Children who do not sleep are less alert, fussier, more distractible, depressed, withdrawn.”

“Sleep problems cause later learning disabilities, ADHD, obesity, and conduct problems."

Books will tell parents, on the other hand, that good sleep results in "better babies." The online program Taking Cara Babies suggests that babies who sleep better have “an easier temperament, are more approachable and less distractible.” Weissbluth (2015) cites research that he says found that babies who slept better were “mild, positive in mood and more likely to approach unfamiliar people” (Weissbluth, 2015, p. 10), and more “adaptable, cooperative, calmer” (p. 70).

What these authors don't say is that they're citing correlational research—meaning, even though the books say that one thing caused the other, the research actually only found that the two things were related.

Good sleep and mellow temperaments are definitely related; however, it's more likely that mellow children just sleep better, not that sleep causes mellower children.

Book authors also tend to cite research on much older children (or even adolescents and college students) as evidence for younger children. It's true that if a school-age child has a sleep problem, that might signal some underlying psychological issues. You cannot say the same thing for a toddler or an infant. Sleep problems are developmentally normal for these children. If a study finds that sleep problems in seventh graders were related to anxiety and ADHD, you cannot say that's true for all sleep problems.

Research is often used inaccurately to portray a problem as more serious and urgent, and the potential outcome much rosier than reality (especially if you don't have a mellow child), in order to get parents to buy into the method.

Parental worry as a marketing opportunity

It’s important to understand that there is a benefit to keeping parents freaked out and uncertain: they will BUY things to alleviate uncertainty — monitors, moving cribs, the perfect sleep suit that says it will facilitate “neuro-natal sleep,” a white noise machine that says it will facilitate babies' language learning while they sleep. First of all, it’s just “sleep.” There is no such thing as “neuro-natal sleep.” Second, babies are exquisitely hard-wired for language. We do not have to boost their skill while they sleep.

Advice and advertising lead parents to believe they need to do everything under the sun to maximize their baby’s potential. They keep parents off-center by making them doubt themselves and their ability, so that they will buy whatever it takes to feel more confident. The overriding message is that parents are not enough and, left to their own devices, they will make bad choices with long-term consequences. None of that is true.

Step away from the socials

Doubt and worry have tangible costs. Research has shown that parents who compare themselves to other parents on social media have higher levels of anxiety and even depression (Sidani et al., 2022) and lower levels of self-efficacy (Germic et al., 2021). The U.S. Surgeon General's (2025) recent report on parental stress found that comparison on social media was partly to blame for the higher stress levels they found. Feelings of “not measuring up” or worries about making mistakes take a measurable toll.

As a sleep coach, I’ve had countless parents of newborns apologetically start the conversation with, “I know I’m doing the wrong thing, but my baby will only sleep on me.” They’re barely out of the gate as parents, and they already feel “wrong.”

We’ve created a parenting culture fueled by anxiety and self-doubt. It shouldn’t be that way. So, before you pick up that next book or start your next Google search, remember that sources of advice have a vested interest in you feeling worried and in need of answers. My advice: Put yourself on an information diet. Take more opportunities to experiment and learn from your own experience with your own child. You won't screw it up. I promise.

About Macall Gordon

Macall Gordon has a B.S. from Stanford in Human Biology and an M.A. from Antioch University, Seattle in Applied Psychology. She is a researcher looking at the relationship between temperament and sleep, the gap between research and parenting advice on sleep training, and the effect of the oversupply of expert advice on sleep. She is a certified pediatric sleep consultant working with parents of alert, non-sleeping children in private practice, as well as on the women’s telehealth platform, Maven Clinic. She comes to this work because she had two sensitive, intense children, and she didn’t sleep for 18 years.

References

Assarsson, L., & Aarsand, P. (2011). "How to be good:" Media representations of parenting. Studies in the Education of Adults, 43(1), 78–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2011.11661605

Åström, B. (2015). A narrative of fear: Advice to mothers. Literature and Medicine, 33(1), 113–131. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2015.0001

Connell-Carrick, K. (2006). Trends in popular parenting: Books and the need for parental critical thinking. Child Welfare, 85(5), 820–836.

Germic, E. R., Eckert, S., & Vultee, F. (2021). The impact of Instagram mommy blogger content on the perceived self-efficacy of mothers. Social Media + Society, 7(3), 205630512110416. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211041649

Macvarish, J. (2016). Neuroparenting: The expert invasion of family life. Palgrave Macmillan.

Macvarish, J. (2016). The peculiar joylessness of neuroparenting. London School of Economics Parenting for a Digital Future Blog

Norman, A. (2017). “What is neuroparenting?” Romper.com

Sidani, J. E., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., & Primack, B. A. (2020). Associations between comparison on social media and depressive symptoms: A study of young parents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(12), 3357–3368. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01805-2

U. S. Surgeon General (2025). Parents under pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General's advisory on the mental health & well-being of parents. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressure.pdf