The problem with articles (more complaining)

I know, I'm whiny. And I'm about to dish on yet another pet peeve of mine. So feel free to not read this if you don't want to hear more of my complaining. But if you do read this, just know that I warned you.

Here it is: Some parents spend more time reading articles on raising a child than they actually spend with their child. And they like to send me the links to those articles, which I promptly delete. You may wonder why I feel this way about articles, considering that I spent most of my last post defending the AAP's recommendations on safety.

I probably wouldn't mind articles if people got them from medical journals or other reliable sources. But it turns out that not that many people subscribe to medical journals (you don't count, Mom). Most people like to get their advice from parenting magazines or websites that throw around phrases like "studies show" and "research suggests" without actually citing their sources. Maybe this comes from being married to someone who does research for a living, but I always wonder, "What studies? What were their methods? How many people did they test? Was there a control group? Were there any obvious lurking variables? Were the results repeatable?" And they never say. (Obviously, because if they did most people would fall asleep after reading the first paragraph. I never said that peer-reviewed journals aren't dry.)

What people also need to think about is, who writes these articles? Not the people who actually do the research. They are probably way too nerdy to make it sound cute and trendy enough to be put into a parenting magazine. It was probably written by a jornalist. Or, if you found it online, anyone who has an 8th grade education and an opinion.

Yeah, for now, I'm just going to delete them all.