Test Babies

One of my favorite features in The Washington Post is Unconventional Wisdom, a summary of the more interesting findings from the social sciences. It appears biweekly in the Outlook section, except for that time when the University of Michigan was studying the relation between routine and stress and got the Outlook editor to print it at irregular times for a few months.

This week's findings included a study that examined the effects of noise on infants language development. They studied 100 babies and found that noisy environments can interfere with language development in infants younger than 13 months.

Which brings me to a question I have every time I read about a study like this: where are they getting the babies from? I thought childbirth creates a powerful, unbreakable bond between mother and child. Yet I've been reading Unconventional Wisdom for many years, and every now and then there's a study like, "Jackhammers Make Babies Cry" or "Shake n Bake: Both Bad for Babies."

What are these mothers thinking? Scientists aren't loading up into a Humvee and doing drive-by baby snatchings. The mothers had to sign at least a few forms. Any parent who sees the words "detrimental," "baby", and "?" in the same sentence should drop the clipboard, remove the baby from the locker, and walk away.

Although I am being presumptuous in assuming these studies are being fueled by mothers' desire for free baby sitting. Maybe it's a lackadaisical father, well-intentioned to give his spouse a day off and then he gets a call from a friend, "Hey, do you want to go golfing?"

At Delinquent Fathers Headquarters, a bulb on the national map lights up, a retrieval unit is dispatched, and five minutes later a Humvee pops up on the curb and a team of scientists jumps out with a clipboard and a six-pack of Corona. Problem solved, even as he can hear his wife's squeaky voice nagging him in the back of his head that their child is not a problem why aren't you listening to me wah wah wah...golf.