Using mechanical soothing to comfort crying babies

In this paper the authors respond to a study by Moller, De Vente and Rodenburg (2019) [1] in which the calming effect of ‘mechanical soothing’ was compared to that of parental soothing. We question the conclusions drawn by Moller et al. about mechanical soothing as an appropriate alternative to parental soothing. We argue that mechanical soothing is undesirable as it is insensitive to the child’s cues and the longterm effects on child development are unclear.