Channel 4’s controversial programme Bringing Up Baby are facing more criticism as a group of childcare professionals condemn the show as “an exploitative parenting series” which gives out “dangerous” advice.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, seven experts call on production companies to “stop making programmes that give irresponsible advice and turn the suffering of tiny babies into adult entertainment”.

Last week, the childcare expert Gina Ford described the techniques advocated by Claire Verity on the programme as “child abuse”. The four-part show, which ends tonight, compares techniques that were popular in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Verity, 41, is shown recommending that infants be left to sleep in a separate room from their mother. She also recommends that parents feed babies at strict four-hour intervals and ignore the child no matter how much it cries.

Childcare professionals, including Mary MacLeod, the chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, say they are alarmed Channel 4 is broadcasting “such an exploitative parenting series as Bringing Up Baby”.

They warn: “Many techniques in these programmes fly in the face of scientific knowledge about brain development in very young babies. That anyone should be billed as an expert and allowed to promote ideas such as not making eye contact with babies and not comforting them in distress is at best irresponsible and at worst dangerous.” …

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/16/nmedia316.xml