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Sleep training: Life preserver for parents or “symptom of capitalism”?

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Sleep training: Life preserver for parents or “symptom of capitalism”?

Todd Warnock/Getty Images

Please go to sleep

Todd Warnock/Getty Images

Well, I’m back. After a lengthy parental leave, when publication of the Planet Money newsletter decreased in frequency, I’m now working full-time and the newsletter will go back to being published weekly.

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As always, I will continue to do my best to provide you with insights from the field of economics and keep you informed about what’s going on in the economy. And, don’t worry, this newsletter is not about to become all about babies. This week, however, it is. Now that I’m a working parent, I want to take just one brief moment to complain on behalf of all of us. Like millions of parents before me, I’ve discovered it’s hard to be productive when you’re sleep deprived.

There’s a ginormous mountain of studies that find that sleep deprivation is a serious drag on productivity. One recent study by economists Joan Costa-i-Font, Sarah Fleche, and Ricardo Pagan estimates that each additional hour of sleep per week increases the probability that a person is employed by 1.6 percentage points and increases a person’s weekly earnings by 3.4%.

Another study by economists Pedro Bessone and colleagues finds that it’s not necessarily just the quantity of sleep hours that matters for productivity, it’s also the quality of sleep. This checks out, personally.

The Modern Dilemma of Juggling Career and Kids

In some ways, the problem of sleep deprivation hurting productivity at work is a contemporary one. More than ever before, families have two parents who work outside the home. Historically, many women stayed at home and bore the brunt of baby-induced sleep deprivation. Today, more often than not, there are two drowsy parents who must go into work the next day and — not speaking from personal experience at all, ahem — may get into small tiffs at around 3 a.m. over whose turn it is to comfort or feed their crying baby.

Plus, thanks to efforts to combat Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) — which, we should note, seem to have been extraordinarily successful — parents are now instructed to avoid co-sleeping and to do things like put their babies to sleep on their backs as opposed to their bellies. While such measures have been found to reduce the risk of SIDS, they also may make it harder for many babies to sleep because many of them naturally want to sleep on their parents or their bellies.

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Sleep Training

For today’s parents, there’s a tantalizing solution to the problem of sleepless babies: sleep training. For many, “sleep training” is a mere euphemism for the most infamous and controversial method: Cry It Out. Basically, you put your baby in a crib or bassinet in a separate room and don’t come back until the morning. If they cry, so be it. The idea is they will learn to self-soothe and become good sleepers.

Not all forms of sleep training are so severe, but most do involve some tolerance for crying and, because of this, many categorize most approaches broadly under the umbrella of “cry it out.”

In her bestselling book Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool, economist Emily Oster reviews the evidence on sleep training and concludes, “The bottom line is that there is simply a tremendous amount of evidence suggesting that ‘cry it out’ is an effective method of improving sleep.”

That said, sleep training is pretty hard, strategically, physically, and emotionally. That’s why there’s a whole cottage industry of high-paid sleep trainers, books, consultants, podcasts, influencers, and so on, who help parents with all this. Recognizing that sleeplessness is a problem for employees to be the most productive, companies like Meta (aka Facebook) have begun subsidizing the cost of sleep training coaching for their workers.

The Online War Over Sleep Training

Ever since we had a baby — and apparently started googling baby-related stuff — my wife and I have found our social media feeds to be jam-packed with baby-rearing and sleep training content.

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For example, my wife was targeted with a post from a baby sleep consultancy called Taking Cara Babies that marketed their services to us (and our employers). “It’s true! Taking Cara Babies has a way your company can give you the gift of sleep (which will help you thrive as an employee). For more information to send to your boss or HR department, head to my stories or comment.”

It seemed pretty innocuous. But the most liked comment was the following: “Wish we had actual parental leave like the rest of the modern world so we weren’t forced to sleep train and get back to work like good little capitalists.”

It turns out this sentiment can be found across the internet, in comments, on sites like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), and by influencers. There’s a large community of parents who disparage sleep training — and, in particular, any form of cry it out — as basically a cruel practice that sacrifices our babies’ well-being on the altar of capitalism.

Whole Mother Therapy, which provides online therapy to parents, for example, argues on their blog that “Sleep training is a symptom of capitalism—it cuts parents off from the natural attachment and nurturance that is essential for infant and baby development.”

“Sleep training is breaking your child’s mind and nervous system to fit into the productivity model capitalism requires,” tweeted an X user named ℍℝ.

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But is not wanting to be really sleep deprived only driven by economic concerns? If I had the luxury of not working, I probably would still want to be well-slept. And aren’t there a whole bunch of countries that have capitalist economies — but, at the same time, robust safety nets — that give parents greater opportunity to stay home and be sleep-deprived without having to go into work? I’ll let you be the judge.

One of the biggest schools that opposes sleep training, or at least strategies that tolerate baby crying, is known as attachment parenting. This approach advises parents against letting babies cry on the grounds that crying is an expression of distress and that it’s unnatural and cruel to not do everything in our power to prevent it. I have friends who pursued attachment parenting. They not only refused to let their babies cry at night without intervention, but they also let their babies sleep in their beds (which, by the way, is not recommended by health experts for at least the first six months of your baby’s life). And let me tell you, years later, their kids are still interrupting their sleep. Not for us.

Emily Oster points out that sleep training has sizable benefits for parents. She cites a randomized controlled trial that found that mothers “were less likely to be depressed and more likely to have better physical health” months after sleep training their babies. “This finding is consistent across studies,” Oster continues. “Sleep-training methods consistently improve parental mental health; this includes less depression, higher marital satisfaction, and lower parenting stress.”

But what about the baby’s mental and physical health? In reviewing the literature, Oster finds no credible evidence that babies’ long-term well-being is impaired by sleep training. “Fundamentally, the argument against sleep training is theoretical,” Oster argues. She admits that it’d be better if we had more studies on this. “And yes, it is possible that if we had more data, we would find some small negative effects,” she admits. But, at the same time, she says, it’s also possible that, by promoting good sleep hygiene, sleep training could actually be a benefit to babies. She concludes that “You’ll have to make a choice about this without perfect data.”

As for us, we’ve pursued a strategy that you might call sleep training lite. Basically, when our baby cries in the night, we either feed him if it’s been a while since he’s eaten or we hold his hand and sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to him while he stays in his crib. Honestly, it worked really well between months 4 and 7. But recently, he started teething, and… well, we’re both really tired. Take that, capitalism.

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Senate Adopts GOP Budget, Laying the Groundwork to Fund ICE and Reopen DHS

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Senate Adopts GOP Budget, Laying the Groundwork to Fund ICE and Reopen DHS

The Senate early Thursday morning adopted a Republican budget blueprint that would pave the way for a $70 billion increase for immigration enforcement and the eventual reopening of the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans pushed through the plan on a nearly party-line vote of 50 to 48. It came after an overnight marathon of rapid-fire votes, known as a vote-a-rama, in which the G.O.P. beat back a series of Democratic proposals aimed at addressing the high cost of health care, housing, food and energy. The debate put the two parties’ dueling messages on vivid display six months before the midterm elections.

Republicans, who are using the budget plan to lay the groundwork to eventually push through a filibuster-proof bill providing a multiyear funding stream for President Trump’s immigration crackdown, used the all-night session to highlight their hard-line stance on border security, seeking to portray Democrats as unwilling to safeguard the country.

Democrats tried and failed to add a series of changes aimed at addressing cost-of-living issues, seizing the opportunity to hammer Republicans as out of touch with and unwilling to act on the concerns of everyday Americans.

Here’s what to know about the budget plan and the nocturnal ritual senators engaged in before adopting it.

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The budget blueprint is a crucial piece of Republicans’ plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security and end a shutdown that has lasted for more than two months. After Democrats refused to fund immigration enforcement without new restrictions on agents’ tactics and conduct, the G.O.P. struck a deal with them to pass a spending bill that would fund everything but ICE and the Border Patrol. Republicans said they would fund those agencies through a special budget bill that Democrats could not block.

“We can fix this with Republican votes, and we will,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the Budget Committee chairman. “Every Democrat has opposed money for the Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great peril.”

In resorting to a new budget blueprint, Republicans laid the groundwork to deny Democrats a chance to stop the immigration enforcement funding. But they also submitted themselves to a vote-a-rama, in which any senator can propose unlimited changes to such a measure before it is adopted.

The budget measure now goes to the House, which must adopt it before lawmakers in both chambers can draft the legislation funding immigration enforcement. That bill will provide yet another opportunity for a vote-a-rama even closer to the November election.

Democrats took to the floor to criticize Republicans for supercharging funding for federal immigration enforcement rather than moving legislation that would address Americans’ concerns over affordability.

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“This is what Republicans are fighting for,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the Democratic leader. “To maintain two unchecked rogue agencies that are dreaded in all corners of this country instead of reducing your health care costs, your housing costs, your grocery costs, your gas costs.”

Democrats offered a host of amendments along those lines, all of which were defeated by Republicans — and that was the point. The proposals were meant to put the G.O.P. in a tough political spot, showcasing their opposition to helping Americans afford high living costs. Fewer than a handful of G.O.P. senators crossed party lines to support them.

The G.O.P. thwarted an effort by Mr. Schumer to require that the budget measure lower out-of-pocket health care costs for Americans. Two Republicans who are up for re-election this year, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, voted with Democrats, but the proposal was still defeated.

Republicans also squelched a move by Senator Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico, to create a fund that would lower grocery costs and reverse cuts to food aid programs that Republicans enacted last year. Ms. Collins and Mr. Sullivan again joined Democrats.

Also defeated by the G.O.P.: a proposal by Senator John Hickenlooper, Democrat of Colorado, to address rising consumer prices brought on by Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran; one by Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, to require the budget measure to address rising electricity prices, and another by Mr. Markey to create a fund to bring down housing costs.

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Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is up for re-election in Georgia, also sought to add language requiring the budget plan to address health insurance companies denying or delaying access to care, but that, too was blocked by Republicans.

While Republicans had fewer proposals for changes to their own budget plan, they also sought to offer measures that would underscore their aggressive stance on immigration enforcement and dare Democrats to vote against them.

Mr. Graham offered an amendment to allocate funds toward a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to the apprehension and deportation of adult immigrants convicted of rape, murder, or sexual abuse of a minor after illegally entering the United States. It passed unanimously.

Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, sought to bar Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and other services, and criticized the organization for providing transgender care to minors. Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, also attempted to tack on the G.O.P. voter identification bill, known as the SAVE America Act. Both proposals were blocked when Democrats, joined by a few Republicans, voted to strike them as unrelated to the budget plan.

The Republicans who crossed party lines to oppose their own party’s proposals for new voting requirements were Ms. Collins along with Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

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Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski also opposed the effort to block payments to Planned Parenthood.

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Who is John Phelan, the US Navy Secretary fired by Pete Hegseth?

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Who is John Phelan, the US Navy Secretary fired by Pete Hegseth?

The firing of US Navy Secretary John Phelan is the latest in a shakeup of the American military during the war on Iran, now in its eighth week.

The Pentagon said Phelan would leave office immediately.

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“On behalf of the Secretary of War and Deputy Secretary of War, we are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy,” said chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. “We wish him well in his future endeavours”.

His firing comes at a critical moment, with US naval forces enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports and ships, and maintaining a heavy presence around the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas passes during peacetime.

Although the Pentagon gave no official reason for the dismissal, reports indicate the decision was linked to internal disputes, including tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

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Phelan’s removal is part of a broader pattern of dismissals and restructuring within the US military under President Donald Trump’s administration – including during the current war.

So, who is John Phelan, and what impact could his firing have on US military strategy?

Who is John Phelan?

As the US Navy’s top civilian official, Phelan had various responsibilities, including overseeing recruiting, mobilising and organising, as well as construction and repair of ships and military equipment.

He was appointed in 2024 as a political ally of Trump, despite having no prior military or defence leadership experience.

Before entering government, Phelan was a businessman and investment executive, as well as a major Republican donor and fundraiser — a background that is fairly common among Trump appointees and advisers. The US president’s two top diplomatic negotiators, for instance, are Steve Witkoff — a real estate businessman with no prior diplomatic experience – and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

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According to the Reuters news agency, Phelan’s tenure quickly became controversial. He faced criticism for moving too slowly on shipbuilding reforms and for strained relationships with key Pentagon figures, including Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg.

rump with U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Michael Borgschulte and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan (R) before the game between the Navy Midshipmen and the Army West Point Black Knights at M&T Bank Stadium [File: Tommy Gilligan/Imagn Images/Reuters]

In addition, Phelan was reportedly under an ethics investigation, which may have weakened his standing in the administration.

Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao, who was also reported to have a difficult relationship with Phelan, has become acting secretary. Fifty-four-year-old Cao is a 25-year Navy veteran who previously ran as a Republican candidate for the US Senate and House of Representatives in 2022 and 2024 respectively, but was unsuccessful on both occasions.

Democrats have criticised Phelan’s removal, calling it “troubling”.

“I am concerned it is yet another example of the instability and dysfunction that have come to define the Department of Defense under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” said Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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Who else has the Trump administration fired since the war with Iran began?

Phelan’s removal is the latest in a series of senior military leaders being fired or are leaving during the US-Israeli war on Iran, in addition to others since Trump was re-elected.

Among the most notable dismissals was Army Chief of Staff General Randy A. George, in the first week of April. George was appointed in 2023 under former US President Joe Biden.

According to reports, Hegseth also fired the head of the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, a unit concerned with modernising the army, and the Army’s chief of chaplains. The Pentagon has not confirmed their dismissal.

Why is Phelan’s dismissal significant?

The 62-year-old’s removal comes during a fragile ceasefire with Iran, as the ⁠⁠US continues to move more naval assets into the region.

The Navy is central to enforcing Trump’s blockade of Iranian ports to restrict Iran’s oil exports and apply economic pressure on Tehran, as the US president looks eager to wrap up the war, which is deeply unpopular to many Americans.

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However, there are no indications that Trump is willing to end the blockade or other naval operations in the Strait of Hormuz, as negotiations between Washington and Tehran have come to a standstill.

Tensions have escalated in recent days after the US military seized an Iranian container ship. The US claimed it was attempting to sail from the Arabian Sea through the Strait of Hormuz to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.

Tehran responded by describing the attack and hijack as an act of “piracy”.

Iran has since captured two cargo ships and fired at another.

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Not a Deal-Breaker: White House Downplays Iranian Action Near the Strait

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Not a Deal-Breaker: White House Downplays Iranian Action Near the Strait

Just two weeks ago, President Trump threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilization if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz. Days later, he said any Iranian “who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”

Yet on Wednesday, after Iran seized two ships near the Strait of Hormuz, the White House was quick to argue the action was not a deal breaker for potential peace negotiations.

“These were not U.S. ships,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Fox News. “These were not Israeli ships.” Therefore, she explained, the Iranians had not violated a cease-fire with the United States that Mr. Trump has extended indefinitely.

She cautioned the news media against “blowing this out of proportion.”

The surprisingly tolerant tone from the White House suggests Mr. Trump is not eager to reignite a war that he started alongside Israel on Feb. 28 — a war that has proved unpopular with Americans and has gone on longer than he initially estimated.

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The president on Tuesday extended a cease-fire between the United States and Iran that had been set to expire within hours, saying he wanted to give Tehran a chance to come up with a new proposal to end the war.

The American military has displayed its overwhelming might during the war, successfully striking thousands of targets. But it remains unclear whether Mr. Trump will accomplish the political objectives of the war.

The Iranian regime, even after its top leaders were killed, is still intact. Iran has not agreed to Mr. Trump’s demands to turn over its nuclear capabilities to the United States or significantly curtail them. And the Strait of Hormuz, a key passageway for world commerce that was open before the war, remains closed.

Nevertheless, the White House has repeatedly highlighted the military successes on the battlefield as evidence it is winning the war.

“We have completely confused and obliterated their regime,” Ms. Leavitt said on Fox Wednesday. “They are in a very weak position thanks to the actions taken by President Trump and our great United States armed forces, and so we will continue this important mission on our own.”

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The oscillation between threats and a more conciliatory tone has long been one of Mr. Trump’s signature negotiating strategies.

Potential peace talks between the two countries are on hold. Vice President JD Vance had been poised to fly to Islamabad for negotiations. But the trip was postponed until Iran can “come up with a unified proposal,” Mr. Trump said.

The United States recently transmitted a written proposal to the Iranians intended to establish base-line points of agreement that could frame more detailed negotiations. The document covers a broad range of issues, but the core sticking points are the same ones that have bedeviled Western negotiators for more than a decade: the scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the fate of its stockpile of enriched uranium.

Mr. Trump has not spoken publicly about the cease-fire, other than on social media. On Wednesday, he also posted about topics including “my Apprentice Juggernaut” — a reference to his former television show; the Virginia elections, which he called “rigged”; and a new book about Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

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