Nonspecific Crying

Remo H. Largo, Professor of Paediatrics

Excerpt from the book "Babyjahre – Development and Parenting in the First Four Years"

Carrying Reduces Crying

Nonspecific crying in the first months of life can leave parents feeling deeply unsettled. Because they can't explain the crying, and because it gets worse from week to week, they understandably assume they must be doing something wrong in caring for or handling their child.

In societies where infants have close physical contact with their mother and other familiar caregivers, nonspecific crying appears to be less pronounced. If we consider that the human infant was carried by its mother for almost the entirety of human history, we have to seriously ask ourselves whether many children are simply unable, in their first months of life, to cope without constant physical contact with their mother and other familiar caregivers.

Being left lying down for hours at a time, a practice that has been customary in our culture since the start of industrialisation, that is, for around 150 years, may put the infant into an unphysiological state, which manifests itself, among other things, as nonspecific crying.

What Research Shows

A more recent study has shown that increased carrying for three hours a day leads to a considerable reduction in daily crying. What matters here is that the infant isn't only carried once they start crying, but that carrying happens spread out across the day.

Repeated physical contact and frequent stimulation of the balance and movement organs appear to have a rhythm-regulating effect on a range of bodily functions, which leads to a reduction in crying periods. Children who are carried more don't sleep any more or less than other children, but they do fall asleep more easily. They are also more alert and more interested in their surroundings. In societies where children cry less, infants aren't just carried more than in ours, they are also breastfed far more often.

Remo H. Largo (1943–2020) was a Swiss paediatrician and, until his retirement in 2005, Professor of Paediatrics. For almost three decades he headed the Department of Growth and Development at the University Children's Hospital Zurich, where he led the Zurich Longitudinal Studies on child development. His book "Babyjahre", published in 1993, became a bestseller and sold more than a million copies.