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I have a lot of discussions with my mother about how to raise my little baby. One of our points of discussion is infant shoes. I want to raise my baby bare footed, or just socks when it’s to cold. My mother comes out of that generation that was told to put on infant shoes as soon as possible. What was wrong with that generation: everything should be artificial. Breast feeding was not all right (formula was better), the babies and kids were stuffed with heavy antibiotics during their childhood. To put it shortly: it’s a miracle that so many of us survived at all… It is amazing how often medical opinions change. It seems that for every study that comes out in the medical field there is another study that follows closely behind it that gives the opposite opinion or finding. Certainly the media plays a role in this, but whenever I hear or read about a different study it seems to me that people just need to use common sense.

We were discussing this recently at a family gathering. My niece was there with her four month old baby. She is breast feeding her and supplementing with formula. My sister-in-law mentioned that when her son was that age the doctor told her to start feeding him cereal. My other sister-in-law had her baby when the doctors were suggesting to not feed any solid foods for the first year. Each of us had been given different advice about feeding our infants. We also laughed about how strict the doctors were regarding infant shoes. When my children went in for there six month check up the doctor suggested that I take them in to be measured for infant shoes, in case they started standing up. We were told that they should have the infant shoes on for at least eight hours a day to insure proper foot development. The infant shoes were leather with hard bottoms and came up past the ankle.

I remember taking in my first born to a shoe store that specialized in infant shoes. His little feet were measured and he was fitted with the high topped infant shoes. He hated wearing them. Every morning it was a struggle to get the small shoes on his feet. He would kick and cry and try to wiggle his foot out of the infant shoes before I could get them laced up. It was a stressful way for both of us to start the day, but I thought it was so important to follow the doctor’s orders.

My niece said that in her baby book it says not to put hard bottom shoes on the infants until they have started to walk. They are finding that infants are more likely to try taking steps if they are barefooted. I am sure that the next generation will be told another theory. Especially with your first child you are so nervous about parenting.  You want to do everything right. Now when I think of the struggle that I went through and how upset I made my son it angers me. To this day he does not like to wear shoes.

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