Stuck on a Sunday: "Somewhere in the Middle"

Emily Oster, an author and economist who focuses on “parenting data,” wrote a post last week about why people are “so afraid of sleep training” and of course the internet immediately went up in arms. Many defended her, discussing the benefits to both mother and baby, while others criticized her for promoting something they see as “harmful.”

I bring this up here… because “sleep training” is one of those topics that feels like it’s about sleep, but it’s really about something much deeper. It strikes a chord in so many people because it’s one of the many ways we collectively define “good parenting.” It touches on attachment, independence, responsiveness, control, culture — all of it wrapped up in how we handle a baby crying at 2 a.m. It’s never just about “bedtime”.

I read through hundreds of comments of mothers bickering back and forth about the “right” way to get a baby to sleep, and I found myself thinking about how similar this feels to the “working mom versus stay-at-home mom” conversation I talk about so much.

In both cases, we tend to divide ourselves into two opposing camps. You either sleep train or you don’t. You either work or you stay home. The framing becomes binary and almost moral, as if choosing one automatically says something definitive about your values, your priorities, or even your love for your child.

But when you step outside the comment sections and look at how most families actually live, it’s far less dramatic and far more nuanced than the internet would have you believe.

Very few mothers are working 80-hour weeks and never seeing their children.

Very few are home 24/7 with no intellectual outlet, no ambition, no paid work, no projects.

Most of us are negotiating something in between — part-time roles, flexible schedules, consulting during preschool hours, volunteering, career pauses, seasons of intensity followed by seasons of recalibration. It shifts as our kids grow, as finances change, as support systems expand or contract. It’s rarely one fixed identity.

Sleep tends to follow the same pattern, at least in my experience talking to hundreds of parents. We talk about it as if there are only two types of parents at night: “those who sleep train and coldly ignore their babies”, and “those who refuse to sleep train and heroically endure endless wake-ups”. (Or, depending on which camp you ask, it’s framed as “parents who sleep train and quickly have happier, better-rested babies” versus “parents who are enabling terrible habits, staying unnecessarily exhausted, and creating codependent children for life.”)

But in reality, most families are adjusting routines, experimenting based on their child’s temperament, responding by knowing their children’s cries, trying something, backing off, and trying again. Some introduce structure while still responding quickly. Some co-sleep for months (or years) and then transition. Some start with a plan and abandon it halfway through. It’s rarely some deep ideology driving these choices. It’s a mix of completely exhaustion, total love, revolving capacity, and empathetic problem-solving.

I know this because I’ve lived it in two completely different ways.

With my first child, I did everything “right.” I read every sleep training book. I took the courses. I tracked wake windows. I analyzed patterns obsessively. I genuinely believed that if I followed the method closely enough, I would eventually feel confident in it. And when it came time to “let him cry”…. well, I had a visceral reaction. It was so physical that my chest tightened and every instinct in me told me to go in there. So I did the “pop-ins.” Wait five minutes. Slowly move away from the crib. All the things I had been told to do.

But it didn’t work for my baby. He didn’t sleep better and neither did I. So, I would lie on the floor next to the crib with my hand through the slats. Eventually I climbed into the crib with him and slept folded in half next to a toddler mattress and then snuck out. I started to recognize which cry was him just waking up and rolling over to fall back asleep on his own, and which cry meant “I need you!” I didn’t know if this was “sleep training” or not but it worked.

By the time I had my second, “sleep training” wasn’t even in my vocabulary. I had two kids now - and my main goal at night was simply not to wake the toddler (who sleeps great now, btw). If the baby stirred, I crawled into bed with him. He would nurse or snuggle, settle quickly, and we would sleep until morning. There was no label attached to it, no formal method, no debate happening in my head. It was just a practical response to the reality of our house at that moment. And again, it worked for us.

What’s interesting is that this same, natural evolution happened in my career alongside this.

When I was working full-time, I felt surrounded by other moms doing the same thing. You have a baby, you take leave, and you go back to work. That was the norm. And I did that, after my first maternity leave and for year years after. But then after my second was born, when when I left my corporate role, the reaction subtly shifted. People asked if I was “staying home full-time now” and “when I thought I’d go back to work”, as if those were the only two possible states. It felt like once you stepped out, you had chosen a side permanently.

But my reality looked nothing like that. I became a stay-at-home mom who took on consulting projects. I structured my weeks so that I had several full days with my kids and others that included work during school or childcare hours. I adjusted constantly depending on what our family needed. I wasn’t fully “out,” and I wasn’t fully “in.” I was living in the gray, and it worked for us.

I think what frustrates me most is how quickly labels flatten the complexity of real life. “Working mom.” “Stay-at-home mom.” “Sleep training.” “Only co-sleeping.” “Exclusively breastfeeding.” “Formula feeding.” These words and phrases suggest clean lines where there are actually gradients shaped by support systems, finances, childcare access, workplace flexibility, mental health, cultural expectations, and the temperament of the specific child in your arms.

We act as if no one combo feeds for months, no one works part-time for a season, no one shifts back and forth over time. But most families I know are living in some kind of blend.

If we loosened our grip on the categories of parenting and career, I think we would realize something comforting. Most of us are not living at the extremes. We’re standing in the messy middle, adjusting as we go, making choices based on capacity and circumstance rather than ideology.

I think the real shift isn’t about choosing the right side. Maybe it’s just about recognizing that the middle ground is not a compromise — it’s where most real life actually happens. And at the end of the day, when you strip away the labels and the debates and the comment sections, the only metric that really matters when navigating family and career is this: it works for us.

Until next week,

This weeks’ group discussion:

Have you ever felt labeled as “one thing” — working mom, stay-at-home mom, sleep trainer, attachment parent — when your reality was much more complicated? What did that feel like?