Question

what are some examples of debate in the story of Didache?

Answer 1

In this 'Issues for Debate' paper, the issue is debate. Today's nurses must be able to advocate, lead, and grow 'big ideas', as well as knowing their way around a patient's body and mind. This paper reports, partly, on a research study into the use of debate to develop clinical reasoning and thinking skills in nursing students. The study was conducted with first and third-year nursing students enrolled at an Australian regional university. Students were asked to comment on the effectiveness of debate as an educational strategy. We combine the results of this research study with literature and discussion into the educational uses of debate to put the argument that using debate in nursing education can be an effective way to foster the type of creative, intelligent, thoughtful and forward-thinking nurses needed in the modern healthcare system.

26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet and her 3-year-old son standing on a chair next to her, nursing her left breast while both stare directly (and unapologetically) at readers.

The underlying story focused on the “attachment parenting” method developed by Dr. William Sears, which advocates prolonged breastfeeding, “baby wearing” (carrying the child in a sling throughout the day), and having babies sleep in parents’ beds. The issue, which appeared on newsstands over the weekend and coincided with Mother’s Day, sparked thousands of responses from news outlets around the world.

Many reported that Time had “reignited” the debate about parenting, and breastfeeding in particular. But that’s not true, at least not judging by the reactions in the mainstream media. What Time reignited is the age-old and somewhat tiresome debate about incendiary magazine covers. Quarreling about whether Time had done good or bad totally overshadowed commentary about the substance of its article, which is unfortunate for anyone interested in learning the basics of the medical community’s current thinking on attachment parenting.

Time’s story, by staff writer Kate Pickert, doesn’t go too deep into the evidence for and against attachment parenting, either. Its focus is Sears, a California pediatrician who wrote the seminal treatise on the method, The Baby Book, in 1992. The 20-year-anniversay peg is a bit weak and Sears is no stranger to the media, but Time contended that, “For all the book’s popularity and influence, surprisingly little is known about the author.”

From there, the piece delved into Sears and his wife’s childhoods and their own child-rearing practices, arguing that attachment parenting is “rooted” in their upbringing and that “Sears’ views are less extreme than his critics (and even many of his followers) realize.”

Pickert doesn’t go easy on Sears, however, mentioning right away that “a lot of people might” call his philosophy crazy. She also dissects in detail one of his more controversial theories—that allowing babies to “cry-it-out” can cause brain damage.

Pickert stresses that “the science on attachment is also easily misunderstood and misused.” While there is evidence that children without “consistent relationships with parents” can suffer developmental and emotional problems, there is “no science to show” that babies who are fed formula, pushed in strollers, or sleep in bassinets “will turn out any different from children raised via the attachment method.”

Sidebars in the story went into a little more detail.

“Bed sharing can be deadly,” science reporter Jeffrey Kluger emphasized in one. “A sleeping adult can crush or suffocate a baby; the risk of SIDS increases as well.” But Sears is largely in sync with the medical community in stating that it’s fine for mothers to breastfeed “into toddlerhood.” The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the US Surgeon General encourage mothers to breast-feed exclusively for six months, introducing solid foods after that while continuing to nurse “one year or longer or as mutually desired by mother and infant,” parenting reporter Bonnie Rochman reported in another sidebar.

That was about it for the science in Time’s story—adequate, if not ample. But the thousands of commentators who responded to the piece made nothing of it.

According to Badinter, “the Society of French Pediatrics has published the most objective report on the subject, pointing out areas of uncertainty and bias.”

That kind of information is useful to readers who know nothing, or next to nothing, about the current medical consensus surrounding parenting, attached or otherwise. Unfortunately, the science discussed in Time and Harper’s was absent from the outcry of the last few days.

A spirited discussion about the latest research on parenting no doubt occurred on parenting blogs and forums, but anybody who is unfamiliar with that corner of the cyberwoods and lacks the inclination to wander in—a reasonable position—would be at a loss. In the mainstream media all anybody seemed to care about as whether or not an attractive young woman suckling her son was too much for the cover of a national newsweekly.