The vast majority of parenting advice out there is sanctimonious BS pushed by people who are either following a fad, using it as a way to establish themselves as some sort of in-group, or with some commercial motivation. For example, breastfeeding and sleep training are a minefield of guilt-tripping and unsubstantiated strongly held opinions. (If your partner does end up breastfeeding - which is by no means necessary - I do second the advice to have a few emergency breast hand pumps available. Also, in the US the hospitals push these giant awful Medela pumps - they are completely outclassed by https://babybuddhaproducts.com/).
Emily Oster is the one author I'm familiar with who comes close to countering this trend, but even she gets too prescriptive sometimes.
The basics of parenting are very simple in theory and pretty hard in practice - stay available, stay patient, stay positive, divide and conquer tasks with your partner, take enough care of yourself to enable the above, adjust as needed. There's not much that's universal beyond that. Your kid's experience will be highly personal to your kid and you'll want to look at the tools and resources available to you (ranging from nannies and food service to bottles/bibs/furniture) and keep evaluating what's working and what's not.
(Also second the other comments referring to miscarriages. They are much more common than you might imagine, and of course incredibly challenging in part because they're so hard to discuss.)
No kidding. The mismatch between common recommendations in North America, and what people do all the world over is huge.
Co-sleeping in particular is this bizarre thing where all the professionals warn against it as if you're playing Russian roulette, while half the people I know do it themselves (and are afraid to talk about it). Nevermind that essentially the rest of the world does it, and we did it before 5 minutes ago.
I get that folks have different preferences and level of comfort, but the rigidity and judgement that gets pushed is kind of hard to believe. It seems like safetyism run amok.
Australia here. It's the same as you described. If you don't go with option X then you clearly should not be trusted with the safety of your own children. Even though option X changes depending on where you are and who you talk to and cultures and mindsets and as time progresses. "Do as I say or you're an idiot".
Emily Oster is the one author I'm familiar with who comes close to countering this trend, but even she gets too prescriptive sometimes.
The basics of parenting are very simple in theory and pretty hard in practice - stay available, stay patient, stay positive, divide and conquer tasks with your partner, take enough care of yourself to enable the above, adjust as needed. There's not much that's universal beyond that. Your kid's experience will be highly personal to your kid and you'll want to look at the tools and resources available to you (ranging from nannies and food service to bottles/bibs/furniture) and keep evaluating what's working and what's not.
(Also second the other comments referring to miscarriages. They are much more common than you might imagine, and of course incredibly challenging in part because they're so hard to discuss.)