Sources

Cradle is grounded in a small, readable library, and it shows its work: every answer lists the library topics it drew on. This page explains what that library is based on and how it is written.

The voices

What to Expect - Heidi Murkoff's series, starting with What to Expect When You're Expecting and continuing with What to Expect the First Year and What to Expect the Toddler Years. Practical, month-by-month information about pregnancy and the early years, and a steady habit of "check with your practitioner". Cradle leans on this approach for pregnancy and newborn topics, alongside mainstream obstetric and pediatric guidance.

Janet Lansbury - author of Elevating Child Care and No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame, and host of the Unruffled podcast, building on Magda Gerber's RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) approach. Respect for babies as whole people, calm and confident limits, acknowledging feelings, sportscasting, and uninterrupted independent play.

Dr. Becky Kennedy - clinical psychologist, author of Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, founder of Good Inside. Kids (and parents) are good inside; behavior is a signal of a need or skill gap; sturdy leadership; boundaries as what the parent will do; "two things are true"; repair.

Dr. Aliza Pressman - developmental psychologist, co-founder of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center, author of The 5 Principles of Parenting and host of Raising Good Humans. Relationship, reflection, regulation, rules and repair; "good enough" parenting and resilience.

Emily Oster - economist, author of Expecting Better (pregnancy), Cribsheet (birth to preschool) and The Family Firm (the school years), and of the ParentData newsletter. What the studies actually say about common rules - caffeine, alcohol, breastfeeding, sleep training, daycare - and a framework for family decisions. Where her reading is more permissive than official medical guidance, Cradle says so and gives the official guidance too.

Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend - Boundaries with Kids, written from a Christian perspective. Children learn ownership of their choices by experiencing reasonable consequences, delivered with empathy; parents model boundaries themselves.

Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish - How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. Concrete words for acknowledging feelings, inviting cooperation, alternatives to punishment, and descriptive praise.

Dr. Daniel Siegel and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson - The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline. "Upstairs and downstairs brain", connect and redirect, name it to tame it.

The Doctors Bjorkman (YouTube) - getting ready before baby, infant care, sleep, feeding and routines. Their channel.

Emma Hubbard (YouTube) - a paediatric occupational therapist: baby development, tummy time, motor milestones and play. Her channel.

Katie Ferraro - registered dietitian: starting solids, baby-led weaning and the "100 first foods" approach. Her channel.

HealthNut Nutrition (YouTube) - family meals, baby and toddler food and meal prep. The channel.

The YouTube topics are summarised from mainstream pediatric guidance on the subjects those creators cover; Cradle does not transcribe or quote their videos, so watch them for their own explanations.

Links to all of these, plus the apps, podcasts and health sites parents ask about most, are on the Resources page.

Safety guidance

Where the question is about health or safety, the library follows widely published guidance from bodies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (safe sleep, newborn fever), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the CDC's urgent maternal warning signs. On these topics, Cradle's answers are firm and point to a professional first.

How the library is written

• Paraphrase with attribution, never quotation. Each topic is an original, plain-language summary written for Cradle, naming the source it is based on. Cradle's safety checks block any answer that attributes a direct quote to these authors.
• One idea per topic, short enough to read in a minute. Open any of them in the Library.
• Honest about differences. The approaches agree on a lot and differ in emphasis; one topic (where the approaches differ) says how.
• Not an endorsement. Cradle is independent. None of these authors or organizations are affiliated with it or have reviewed it. If an idea here interests you, please read the original - the books are far richer than any summary.

Adding to the library

Each topic is a Markdown file in corpus/parenting/source_cards/. To add one: one idea per file, a # Title first line, a Grounded in: line naming the source, the content in your own words, and a ## Themes list of words people might search with. No code change is needed; the library is indexed when the app starts.