I know that the whole sleep disruption thing can lead to a lot of Ferberization "discussions" online.

Well, here's to discussions.

New Scientist has a new study that's sure to come up on both sides of 'em. Headline: Letting babies cry will only lead to more tears.

The study was led by an education expert from the University of London, looking at three groups of parents (here called "London," "Copenhagen," and "Proximal Care," which is not an island near Malta, but maybe should be), and seeing how their different approaches to what-to-do-when-baby-cries affect infant behavior.

(If you picture this going on in an orphanage, or not going on as the case may be, then the relevance might be clearer.)

The difference between the three groups:

At 10 days proximal-care parents held their babies for around 16 hours a day, and were more likely than other parents to sleep in the same bed as them at night. London parents held their babies for around 8 hours 30 minutes a day, and Copenhagen parents for just under 10 hours a day. The London parents also left their crying or fussing babies for much longer than both of the other groups.

And how this changed the way babies cried (or slept, or whatever):

The hands-off approach adopted by the London parents appeared to backfire: their children fussed and cried 50 per cent more than the other two groups at two and five weeks of age, and they were still crying more after 12 weeks.

The results also suggest there is little to gain from giving your baby a very high level of comfort and care. In general, Copenhagen babies cried as little as those given proximal care, and at 12 weeks they woke and cried slightly less often at night.

In the end, though, like most things, nothing's going to get in the way of a really good cry:

Comforting your baby on demand could minimise fussing and crying during the early weeks, concludes St James-Roberts, who presented his findings at a conference on infant sleeping and crying in Leicester, UK, last month. "But it makes no difference to the unsoothable bouts of crying that are the core of colic."