If you took a tour of various baby rooms across the country, you’d probably find two common things: a crib and an exhausted new parent rocking and singing their little bundle of joy to sleep. One mom on TikTok thinks this scene is all wrong, and her recent viral rant about typical baby sleep advice has parents up in arms. The mom, who goes by the username Coming Up Fern on social media, thinks cribs and sleep schedules are “inhumane” and take away babies’ bodily autonomy.
“If you look at the typical American nursery, you will notice that it’s set up for the parents’ benefit, not the child’s,” she says in a viral video on TikTok. “All the artwork is up high where babies can’t even see it. We literally buy these little baby jail cells so that we can just leave our babies in there and walk away. I don’t have a crib because I will never enforce my baby to have a bedtime.”
The mom takes it a step further, explaining that she considers bedtimes and cribs to be a form of abuse. “Babies are people too, and forcing anyone to sleep when they’re not tired is inhumane,” she adds. “Imagine if your partner locked you in a container and forced you to sleep even though you aren’t even tired. That would be abuse, and you’d probably leave them. Kids deserve the right to bodily autonomy just like we do, and that includes sleep.”
Instead of a crib, the mom says she has a floor bed so the baby can “sleep when the baby is feeling sleepy and get up and move around when the baby is not.” Floor beds are a feature of Montessori-style nurseries. Some parents use a small bed with a wooden frame, while others use a toddler-sized mattress that sits directly on the floor.
The mom’s diatribe against cribs sparked intense reactions from people online. The video has over 56,000 comments on TikTok, and has been shared over 70,000 times. Many have taken issue with the video’s judgmental tone, such as using the phrase “baby jail” to refer to something as common and safe as cribs. “Normalize explaining your parenting style without shaming others who do it differently,” one person writes.
Others feel the suggestion of letting babies call the shots is absurd. “This is a big yikes,” writes one person on Twitter. “Babies don’t have all the self-regulatory mechanisms developed yet to determine ‘I feel tired’ = ‘I should close my eyes and go to sleep.’ Adults have to help children learn how to take care of themselves by creating an environment for good sleep.”
Infants often need help soothing themselves to sleep, and young babies typically aren’t able to form their own sleeping and waking patterns, according to Johns Hopkins University Medicine. As others point out, cribs and sleep routines are also useful to parents who have more than one child or who have to go to work.
“There’s a great deal of privilege in this as well,” they write. “People who work for a living get their babies on a sleep schedule so that they don’t disrupt the whole family’s routine. The baby isn’t the only one in the family who has needs.”
While no sleep method or parenting style will be right for every parent, there are some common guidelines all parents need to follow to ensure babies sleep safely. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), infants who are less than a year are at risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDs), which claims around 3,500 lives each year. To help prevent SIDs and keep infants safe, the AAP recommends:
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Placing infants to sleep on their backs until they are at least one year old. Side sleeping is not advised.
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Babies should sleep only on a firm surface, such as a crib mattress.
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Mattresses should be covered by a tight fitted sheet with no other bedding or soft objects, as these could create suffocation hazards.
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Infants should never be left to sleep on sofas, armchairs or in sitting devices.
The AAP also recommends that infants room-share with their parents for at least the first six months, though they don’t recommend bed-sharing. They suggest placing a crib, play yard or bassinet in the parents’ room.
It can take some trial and error to figure out the best sleep routine for your family. Sharing alternatives to common parenting practices is one thing, but it’s quite another to suggest that parents are participating in a form of abuse by using an AAP-approved crib or encouraging cranky babies to sleep. Parents differ in their approaches, but they’re united in their desire to raise safe, loved and happy babies who are as well cared for as possible. The style of bed you choose for your baby’s room doesn’t change that.
