Be your own expert

Another Meagan Francis post about happiness, and how we need to trust our insincts more to be happier (happier than we would be worrying about every new headline or study).
Excerpt:
The truth, I learned, is that magazines and websites have to publish information that their readers are interested in, so the more people are talking about something, the more likely it is to get ink. Makes sense, right? But it’s a cycle: the more magazine covers, blog posts, and book titles are devoted to a specific topic, the more parents are going to talk about it, and the more they’ll start asking their pediatricians about it, and the more those pediatricians will start forming their own opinions (and perhaps write their own books) about it, and then those pediatricians will be interviewed for more magazine articles… and so on and so forth. A trend is born.
Sure, it’s great to bring certain information–like the need for babies to have strong necks, or ways to help babies and moms get much-needed sleep–to light. But the unfortunate side effect can be mommy/parent fear, concern, and guilt over topics that may not really be all that big a deal. That feeds into the pressure to buy more books and seek out products to solve the “problem”, whether the “problem” is a baby who doesn’t seem quite as advanced as his playmate at Gymboree, a newborn who hates laying on his belly (many do), or a 6-week-old who—surprise!—doesn’t want to sleep on a schedule.