About Babywearing

One of the most frequent questions new parents ask, is why choose a baby carrier over one of the other options for transporting babies, like infant carriers and strollers. Wearing your baby in a carrier allows you to constantly be in close contact with him. You can easily stroke, rock, kiss, pat and signal your love to your baby. It makes logical sense that it’s good for your baby to be close, and there are plenty of scientific studies that support additional benefits of gained by frequent babywearing.

High Tactile Experience Helps Build Higher Self Esteem

In her book, Touching, Ashley Montague says “The kind of tactuality [another fancy word for touching] experienced during infancy and childhood not only produces the appropriate changes in the brain, but also affects the growth and development of the end organs in the skin. The tactually deprived individual will suffer from a feedback deficiency between skin and brain that may seriously affect his development as a human being.”

Babies Kept In Close Contact Sleep Better

Ms. Montagu cites expert Anna Freud as commenting on the close interrelation between the needs for sleep and for skin contact, ‘falling asleep being rendered more difficult for the infant who is kept strictly separated from the mother’s body warmth.’ Ms. Freud also draws attention to interrelation between sleep and passive body movement – that is, rocking. The relaxed child sleeps, the troubled child suffers from disturbed sleep.

Touching From Babywearing Improves Immune Function

In her book, Ms. Montagu discusses the multitude of research studies on animal and human responses to touching, and the advantages in health, alertness, and responsiveness of those who have been “carried” as compared with those who have received minimal or no handling. Weininger, in an early unpublished study of ten infants beginning at ten weeks of age, whose mothers were taught to stroke their infants’ backs, reported that at six months of age these infants had fewer sniffles, colds, vomiting, and diarrhea than the infants in the control group, whose mothers had not been taught to stroke their infants.

Babywearing Reduces Crying & Fussing, And Encourages Content Eating Habits

Linda Folden Palmer details a study in her book, Baby Matters, where mothers were given baby slings and instructed to increase the amount of time that they carried their baby. The result was babies cried 43% less, fussed less, and ate more contently.

She goes on to say, “Infants around the world are carried much of the day, either in the arms, in variously fashioned slings, or wrapped closely to the back as mother works in the field. Carrying provides stimulation through motion, known as ‘vestibular’ stimulation, and allows babies and children to observe mother’s activities and converse with her. Infant carrying also renders soothing through exposure to mother’s odor, close body contact, body warmth, and body sounds, as well as with the motion.”

“When U.S. mothers in an experiment were given baby slings and instructed to increase infant carrying time, it was found that their infants were more securely attached to their mothers at 13 months of age than those who were simply given baby seats. In another study that induced increased carrying for infants, the babies cried 43% less, fussed less, and ate more contently. Yet, it has been shown that increased carrying may not reduce the crying in infants who have colic. This refers to the colic with cries related to pain, as opposed to extended crying due to other reasons. If a food reaction or other disorder is occurring, carrying may provide support, but it does not make a painful problem go away.”

Montagu, Ashley. Touching, Third Edition. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1986.

Palmer, Linda Folden. Baby Matters: What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Caring for Your Baby. Lancaster, OH: Lucky Press, LLC, 2001.