You're on to the right answer. Our families are much smaller, and people don't have enough experience with infants anymore. Maybe no experience at all. They think they have to do something chemical to stop the crying.
Possibly people don't know how to love babies anymore. They've never seen it in action. In past generations, we all knew how to soothe a crying baby because we saw so many of them in our daily life. Even a few decades ago I remember my young relatives being amazed that I just picked up a crying baby out of his stroller and gave him some love and attention to stop the crying.
“You’re on to the right answer.”
Thanks. And note that ‘spank’ is a very subjective term. I didn’t say ‘hit’ or ‘whack’ the kid at that age, because that is abuse and that is far more than necessary to get the kid’s attention when they’re very young. But people now are conditioned to conflate the terms. In one parenting book I saw, but didn’t read, I looked up the term “spank” in the index, and it said “see ‘child abuse’ “. So that’s what we have now.
In in my early parenting days, I was surprised by how light of a tap it took to get their attention when they were very young...it was almost like they knew the message it meant, even without any pain. Now, as they go older, it did take a bit more.
Anyway, I don’t mind bursting the bubbles of new-age parents who think Dr. Spock is smarter than their grandparents, as it’s good that people get more opinions on parenting than just what the Left feeds them.