4 x 60′ for Channel 4

A strict regimen of four-hourly feeds or breast-feeding on demand? Constant physical contact between mother and child or leaving baby to sleep for eight hours a day in a pram in the garden? Controlled crying or responding to his every whim? For the past 100 years, new parents have been bombarded with volumes of highly specific – and contradictory – advice on how to care for their little bundles of joy.

Bringing Up Baby takes the guiding principles of three of the last century’s most popular handbooks and observes six sets of parents as they put them to the test. The series follows each expectant mum through the final stages of her pregnancy, childbirth and the first three months of the infant’s life. The families have all chosen the method they want to follow. We’ll be with them every step of the way as they explore the wealth of advice on antenatal care, feeding, establishing sleeping patterns, diet and staying sane.

Will the military routine of Dr Truby King’s 1913 book Feeding and Care of Baby provide the structure and respite the exhausted new parents are looking for? Will Dr Benjamin Spock’s famous piece of advice from 1946: “Trust yourself: you know more than you think you do” be reassuring – or panic-inducing? Will the ‘in-arms’ phase recommended by Jean Liedloff’s 1975 Continuum Concept produce a blissed-out baby – or an addled mum?.

Bringing Up Baby combines living-history techniques with fascinating archive footage and the personal testimonies of both parents and professionals to chart the changing fashions and attitudes of the last century, while addressing some age-old questions about how to raise our children and whether, in the end, it’s not the expert, but mother who really knows best.

Series Producer
Anna Davies

Executive Producer
Daisy Goodwin / Tanya Shaw

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