By Brian Carnell

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Every couple of years the Consumer Products Safety Commission realizes it does not have enough to do and so makes some noise about a horrible safety hazard -- children sleeping in their parents' bed.

Early this month the CPSC put out a press release nothing that from 1991 through 2001, at least 180 children under the age of two died while sleeping in an adult bed. Back in 1999 it issued a similar press release noting that from 1990 through 1997, 515 children under 2 died while sleeping in an adult bed.

Obviously sharing a bed with an adult must be dangerous.

Sure, but not as dangerous as sleeping alone in a crib. As Katie Allison Granju pointed out at her weblog, estimates put the number of deaths of infants in cribs, bassinets and cradles at more than 2,000 annually, compared to the 60 or so infants the CPSC maintains die every year from sleeping with an adult.

The bottom line is that from these numbers we can tell almost nothing about the relative risk of either sleeping method. In order to have the numbers make any sense at all as far as which sleeping method is safer, we would need to have reliable information on how frequently infants sleep in an adult bed vs. how frequently they sleep in a crib, bassinet or cradle.

Given that the CPSC lacks that information, it is completely unconscionable for it to recommend to parents that they never place a sleeping baby in an adult bed. They have absolutely no scientific basis for making that recommendation and the commission should be ashamed of itself for trying to create a safety hysteria over a practice that is as old as humanity itself.

Source:

Commission recommends against children sleeping in adult beds. Laura Lane, WebMD, September 29, 1999.

comments. Katie Granju, Loco Parentis, May 6, 2002.

CPSC, JPMA Launch Campaign About the Hidden Hazards of Placing Babies in Adult Beds. Press Release, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, May 3, 2002.

Discuss (0 Replies) | Printer Friendly