It must be at least partly genetic. American doctors started telling parents to have their babies sleep on their backs because the rate of SIDS in Europe, where babies slept on their backs, was lower than in America and Canada, where most babies didn’t. If the flat head is just from sleeping on the back, then Europeans should have flat heads, too, just like Asians. They don’t - their heads are like white North Americans.
Also - Taiwanese also have flat faces. Sleeping on their backs can’t be the reason for this. It seems the natural shape of the Taiwanese head is flatter.
My friend here has two children who are both flat-headed. I didn’t know her when the older one was still a baby, but her younger child definitely spends a lot of time lying on his back and has a very flat head. My teaching assistants would comment on how round some children’s heads were. These were women who are young mothers (25-35 years old). I would bet that of the flat-headed people here, it is more than likely from sleeping on their backs as their skulls were forming. As arabe said, we might not notice it now, but when those who were born after the medical associations came out with back-sleeping preventing SIDS significantly grow up, we may notice more flat-headedness. Daasgrl, thanks for the link to baby hammocks. I could see myself keeping a baby hammock next to my bed when I have children. It seems like a safer alternative to merely back-sleeping or bed-sharing. Very useful stuff on here…how could this have been floundered?
:lol: My friend David is a (white) American with a very round head. His wife is Taiwanese. They had a baby and the baby looked completely Taiwanese…from the front!!! LOL. People would greet the baby on the street and assume that the baby was 100% Taiwanese, but as soon as the baby turned his head to the side, the person was like, “Is the father American or something?” because the baby had a HUGE bulb on the back of his head. The skull shape was totally western. LOLOL.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]OK, here’s the highly recommended Taiwan baby hammock:
And here’s the happy baby (Emily):
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Cute photo! I’d like to second the recommendation for the hammock; we used almost exactly the same type (strangely enough, also acquired from Jiayi) for about the first 4 months. Our son slept like an angel for nearly all that time. When we moved him to a normal cot (as he’d outgrown the cradle) he then started waking up once or twice a night …
As well as being possible to rock the cradle while still half asleep, it also had a mosquito net attached which saved him from those evil beasties. The only possible downside was that his position in the cradle made him sleep with a slightly bent back, which I worried might affect his spine’s growth.
On the flat head thing - despite sleeping in the cradle, and playing on his tummy, he’s still got a slightly flat head! Perhaps it is a genetic thing, and he’s inherited his mums head!