A pediatrician stands by her parenting advice despite a backlash

Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez is a primary care pediatrician at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She hosts the American Academy of Pediatrics Healthy Children podcast for parents.

A few weeks ago, I posted on social media what I called “unhinged” advice I’ve given to families. I’m a pediatrician and a mom of two, and I chose that word deliberately — it’s half sarcasm and half scroll stopper, but the point is that many parents have lost the plot when it comes to children needing to be comfortable with discomfort.

In truth, I don’t believe my statements to be all that unhinged.

Before I go any further, it’s important to say my statements were not blanket prescriptions for every family, everywhere. The words of advice are things I have said to specific patients in the context of knowing them, their babies, their households, their histories and their struggles. That context matters enormously in medicine, and it matters here. If that nuance got lost in a short-form video, that’s worth acknowledging.

With that said, what happened next wasn’t really about my advice. The comments that followed were a referendum on what modern Western culture believes mothers are allowed to do and want, and what children are owed.

The four pieces of “unhinged” advice I’ve given in my office:

1. Take a girls’ trip to wean your baby off the breast.

2. You need a date night more than your baby needs you at every single bedtime.

3. Don’t make separate meals. Your kids eat what you eat, or they don’t eat.

4. Let your kid fail.

Many moms and fellow pediatricians were quick to agree in online comments, saying these were simple, common-sense tips that have worked for them. But soon enough, the backlash reared its head. The comments sorted themselves into camps, each revealing something interesting about how our society has come to think about motherhood, sacrifice and raising children.

“I will never let my baby fall asleep without me. I’m not in my teens or early 20s. I’m an adult woman. I don’t need to go out for drinks while my tiny child I made is looking for me for comfort. This time is temporary. Love and nurture your babies as much as you can.” — @jalaurpeno on Instagram

I want to be careful here, because the feeling driving this comment is real and worth honoring. Early motherhood is fleeting, and the impulse to soak up every moment is human.

But this commenter reframes a mother’s need for rest, connection and autonomy as immaturity. Going out for drinks (code, apparently, for abandoning your child) is something teenagers do, she suggests. Adult women, real mothers, don’t need that. They have transcended wanting.

To me, this stance is the martyrdom model of motherhood, and it’s pervasive across social platforms and the broader media landscape. This approach positions self-erasure not just as a sacrifice but as the proof of love. The more of yourself you give up, the better mother you are. Wanting things for yourself — a trip, a night out or friendships that exist outside the context of your child — is framed as a failure of commitment.

The backlash to the idea of weaning off the breast through absence was similar.

“No, that’s just mean. If they’re not ready to wean I won’t do it. Going away for DAYS is insane. My baby is 2 and we never spent a night apart,” said @kandersrum on Instagram.

In reality, breastfeeding is a practice that has to work for both mother and baby. The decision to wean, much to the dismay of many, can come from either party. In an ideal world, weaning is gradual and gentle. But many mothers struggle with gradual weaning; the body doesn’t always cooperate, and neither does the nursing toddler who wants one more feed.

What I’ve seen, clinically and personally, is that sometimes absence is the kindest shortcut. Taking a trip, and letting the other parent or another trusted adult handle those days, removes you from the equation in a way that is actually merciful for everyone. The bond you built over months of feeding does not dissolve in a long weekend. That’s just not how attachment works.

“Girls night = excuse to act single.” — @slugmire on Instagram

According to this commenter, a mother who wants time with her friends, without her children or her partner, is not resting or connecting or filling her own cup. She’s performing singleness, and she’s suspicious. The girls’ trip isn’t just misguided advice; it’s morally coded.

Here’s what I actually believe, as a doctor and as someone in a long-term partnership: Your relationship with your partner is not a luxury — it is infrastructure. A relationship fed with time, with attention, with the occasional night that has nothing to do with pickup and drop-off logistics, can sustain the enormous weight of raising children together.

The most stable, secure family environments I see in my practice are ones where the adults treat their partnership as something worth their effort and attention. So no, date night is not selfish; it’s a smart investment and good parenting.

“Letting your kid go hungry because they don’t like what you’ve cooked IS ABUSE and should be seen as such.” — @lyragoblinbongs on Instagram

This is the camp I find most instructive, because it reveals how much modern culture has lost its way on children and discomfort.

Let me be clear about what I said and what I didn’t say. I did not say: Make food your child hates and force them to finish their plate. I did not say to ignore hunger cues or to deprive children of nutrition. What I said was: Don’t make separate meals. Serve what you’re eating. Offer variety as best you can so that they eat something on the plate. And stop the bargaining.

Bargaining and offering options teach children that the real meal is of their choosing. Why would any child engage seriously with dinner when they have learned that the actual food they want will inevitably appear if they balk? Kids quickly pick up that if they just play with the salad, the chicken nuggets or the peanut butter and jelly will materialize. What the mac and cheese parents think is their “backup” is what the child perceives as the real meal awaiting. Not to mention that you are telling them, repeatedly, that your word is not final.

So yes, I sent my child to bed hungry once or twice, and guess what? He woke up, made up the calories at breakfast and learned an important lesson: Mom was not bluffing.

I have one more thing to say about the catastrophizing camp. The escalation to accusations of “abuse” in the comments tells us, in my view, something key about the current parenting climate: We are quick to conflate a child’s momentary discomfort with harm. Discomfort and harm are simply not the same thing, and continuing to deprive our children of discomfort is a sure way to set them up to fail in the real world.

It’s hard to argue with the advice to let kids fail. But it’s worth noting how many people took the time to stop by the comment section to echo this sentiment.

“As someone who works in an elementary school, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let your kids fail. Problem solving and resiliency are nearly non-existent in children right now,” @margaret_adelle said on Instagram.

Most parents seem to agree that we are raising children for the real world, and not for a curated environment where every disappointment is buffered and every discomfort smoothed. And yet, at least some families seem to believe that in our day-to-day lives, making a separate plate and endlessly sacrificing to avoid their kids’ discomfort is totally OK!

But protecting children from failure and discomfort is not the same as protecting children. In fact, shielding our kids from disappointment and defeat may be one of the more insidious ways we fail them. When parents hover, negotiate and absorb every hardship before it reaches their kids, they are sending a message: You cannot handle this.

What builds resilience is not the absence of difficulty. It’s the experience of difficulty, with a parent nearby who believes in their capacity and has given them the tools to get through it.

The reaction to my suggestions was not, in my view, really about breastfeeding, mealtime or bedtime routines. The backlash was about what modern Western culture believes mothers are permitted to be and what children are owed.

A good mother, according to my commenters, does not prioritize her own sleep, body, marriage or social life. She does not take trips. She does not go out for drinks. She is not, in any meaningful sense, a person with needs that are as deserving of fulfillment as her children’s.

And when someone suggests otherwise, the response is not just disagreement, it’s moral indignation. What I was saying, in part, underneath the details of my advice, is something the internet found dangerous: Moms matter, too.

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