Man fires back at critic who shamed wife for bedsharing with their kids

Young mother playing with her baby girl playing in bed. Space for copy. (iStock)

Anyone who’s raised kids has more than likely faced criticism for his or her parenting choices. But not everyone has a partner as outspoken as David Brinkley, an Oklahoma father of two who recently defended his wife on Facebook after one of her friends questioned her decision to share a bed with their children, Fox 32 Chicago reported.

"I just decided to come out as a man and set a few things straight. I do NOT hate any part of what makes my wife the mother that she is,” Brinkley wrote in the viral Facebook post, which has since been removed from the site. "I would NEVER degrade or disregard anything that she feels like doing for my children. Do I have to squeeze into a small corner of the bed sometimes? Yeah? But my God how beautiful does she look holding my children? Making them feel loved and safe?"

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Although bedsharing is not customary in western societies like it is in non-western nations, it isn’t uncommon either, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Often, the practice makes parents feel like they’re bonding with their babies, and for those moms who are breastfeeding, it can offer more convenience for those late-night feedings. Yet some parents who decide against bedsharing  do so because they believe it will help their children gain more independence.

While the decision to bedshare is up to parents, sleeping with infants can be risky. According to the Mayo Clinic, the practice can increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which can occur when a soft surface suffocates a small child.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1,600 babies died due to SIDS in 2015.

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Bedsharing is different from co-sleeping, which involves sleeping in the same environment, but not the same surface, according to the NIH.

While it’s unclear how old Brinkley’s children are, the Yukon man obviously isn’t in a rush to get he and his wife’s bed back to themselves.

"Our wives only experience these little seasons in motherhood for a short time,” Brinkley wrote on Facebook. “They carry our babies they birth them they nurture them and maybe while they are little they let them crawl into our beds and snuggle but eventually our babies get bigger they grow up they get ‘too cool’ for snuggles so why would we as men want to steal a single second of this time from them?"

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Fox 32 Chicago reported that Brinkley ended the post by calling on other men to respect their wives in their roles as moms. As of Saturday, the post had been shared over 67,000 times.