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Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#21

Post by dools »

thejosh wrote: post #8
pointyhats wrote: post #4

They should do this in the UK. From observing the locals, the maternity grant (until yanked by the government) was used to buy designer gear for the mother, cigarettes and some expensive fashionable buggy for the baby (usually topped up by the baby's grandparents). Unfortunately essential stuff was forgotten. This solves those problems.

Same as Australia in most cases unfortunately.. They have now removed the "Baby Bonus".

Really? In "most cases"? My wife and I, and all our friends who have kids (which is the majority of our friendship circle now) used the baby bonus(es) to buy, you know, stuff for our babies. Like clothes, sleeping gear, safety stuff for round the house, prams (one for the first and a dual P&T when the second came along ... both off gumtree). We used it to pay for the ridiculously high electricity bill caused by having a heater running all the time to keep the temperature optimal so our baby would sleep properly in our shitty rental house in winter. We used it to pay for proper car seats, to have those seats properly installed, to install a metal grate so crap doesn't fly from the back of the car into our children's faces when we stop suddenly.

Whilst there were some pretty high profile cases of misuse (especially when it was given as a lump sum payment when it was first introduced as pork barrelling measure to gain ground amongst "Howard's Battlers") I think your claim that it was misused in "most cases" only goes to show that you don't have kids.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#22

Post by mercurial »

schoper wrote: post #17

If we lived in a world where journalists knew the slightest bit about critical thinking: Hmm, I wonder if the cardboard box cuts Finland's infant mortality. Maybe I should look up infant mortality for Norway and Sweden? Oh, it's exactly the same as Finland's? Can't be the box then. I'm willing to bet that U.S. infant mortality is the same or even lower -- for people of Finnish descent.

If we lived in a world where HN readers read thoroughly the articles they comment on...

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#23

Post by krichman »

codeulike wrote: post #20
schoper wrote: post #17

If we lived in a world where journalists knew the slightest bit about critical thinking: Hmm, I wonder if the cardboard box cuts Finland's infant mortality. Maybe I should look up infant mortality for Norway and Sweden? Oh, it's exactly the same as Finland's? Can't be the box then. I'm willing to bet that U.S. infant mortality is the same or even lower -- for people of Finnish descent.

It doesn't say the box cut infant mortality, it says that in the period 1940 to 1960, a combination of the box, encouraging visits to doctors and the national health insurance system cut infant mortality.

I've done a small study and it turns out a combination of documenting, preparing unit tests, and cardboard boxes improve my source code quality by quite a bit.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#25

Post by [deleted] »

krichman wrote: post #23
codeulike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't say the box cut infant mortality, it says that in the period 1940 to 1960, a combination of the box, encouraging visits to doctors and the national health insurance system cut infant mortality.

I've done a small study and it turns out a combination of documenting, preparing unit tests, and cardboard boxes improve my source code quality by quite a bit.

[deleted]

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#26

Post by pavlov »

krichman wrote: post #23
codeulike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't say the box cut infant mortality, it says that in the period 1940 to 1960, a combination of the box, encouraging visits to doctors and the national health insurance system cut infant mortality.

I've done a small study and it turns out a combination of documenting, preparing unit tests, and cardboard boxes improve my source code quality by quite a bit.

Duh. It's obviously not the box itself that has reduced mortality. The "cardboard box" is a rhetorical shortcut that refers to the contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care.

There's a strong autistic trait in HN discussion sometimes...

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#27

Post by vidarh »

riffraff wrote: post #15
davedx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? "In the 1930s Finland was a poor country and infant mortality was high - 65 out of 1,000 babies died. But the figures improved rapidly in the decades that followed." It's now 3/1,000.

correlation/causation. E.g. Italy does not have baby boxes, and child mortality went from 60/1000 to 3/1000 in the last sixty years too. This happened basically everywhere, and either cardboard boxes play a big role and are used everywhere, or the effect is quite limited.

The article does not claim that the cardboard box itself played a big role.

It implies that the requirement to get prenatal care in order to receive the box played a role. EDIT: And it's not even making a strong claim about that. From the article "Mika Gissler, a professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, gives several reasons for this - the maternity box and pre-natal care for all women in the 1940s, followed in the 60s by a national health insurance system and the central hospital network."

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#29

Post by pointyhats »

peteretep wrote: post #24
pointyhats wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stand outside ASDA in Feltham or Hounslow and observe.

So, no?

Not everything needs citation in the form of a survey or scientific paper. I doubt the results of it would be honest as the people who they would be surveying have an interest in lying about the things they have purchased with it.

Some things are blatantly obvious if you peel your eyes occasionally and observe humanity.

Re: Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes

#30

Post by ars »

pavlov wrote: post #26
krichman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a small study and it turns out a combination of documenting, preparing unit tests, and cardboard boxes improve my source code quality by quite a bit.

Duh. It's obviously not the box itself that has reduced mortality. The "cardboard box" is a rhetorical shortcut that refers to the contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care. There's a strong autistic trait in HN discussion sometimes...

> contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care

None of that did anything either, since other countries didn't have them and infant mortality went down there too.

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