I think it is all about being informed and making an informed choice. You might be informed about the risks of your child sleeping on his or her stomach, but depending on the age of the child and your personal circumstances (ie: whether there are other risk factors such as smoking, 2nd hand mattress, etc) you might decide that the risk is low enough and let your bub sleep on his or her stomach. Equally, you may have read of the risks of extended periods of crying or 'controlled crying" but decided that, damn it, tonight I just need to sleep so my winging two year old can cry for an hour while I wear ear plugs.

Personally,DH and I do our best to read as much as we can on childrearing and so on and then based on that information make an informed choice. I respect anyone else who does the same, even if their choices based on the same information are different.

I think a great example is organic food - I completely understand and applaud people who are, say, vegetarians and eat only organic food and insist on that for their children. DH and I don't do this - we eat well enough, choose organic where we can/can afford to but have the odd bit of cr@p in our diet as well. With Flynn's diet, he has non-organic vegies and non-organic meat but organic baby food when I buy it in a jar - go figure LOL! But my point here is we are trying to look at the big picture of chemicals being bad and making choices that suit us and our lifestyle as a whole. We drive a car with a plastic interior, use a microwave, paint our house with commercial paint - but use an organic floor sealant and DH is in the process of building a new chest of drawers for Flynn because he doesn't want MDF near our bub's clothing. It's about us being informed as parents and making a choice.