Their conclusions clearly find that maternal kissing has no effect on making children feel better, suggesting that the practice is probably a waste of everyone's time.
Maternal kissing of boo-boos confers no benefit on children with minor traumatic injuries compared to both no intervention and sham kissing. In fact, children in the maternal kissing group were significantly more distressed at 5 minutes than were children in the no intervention group. The practice of maternal kissing of boo-boos is not supported by the evidence and we recommend a moratorium on the practice.Not only is kissing boo-boos not beneficial, it could actual be harmful! So what should mothers do instead?
Some would likely argue that, given that maternal kisses did not clearly harm children, the practice is innocuous. ... [Since] maternal resources are very limited, and time spent on delivering ineffective kisses to boo-boos means that maternal attention is not devoted to other activities that have clearly been shown to be beneficial to toddlers. ... Most importantly, reliance on ineffective therapies may delay or prevent the delivery of proven and appropriate medical care, such as Bac-Be-Gone® antibacterial ointment and Steri-Aids® self-adhesive bandages.If you weren't convinced that the paper is a joke, you have to read the fine print. Always read the conflicts or funding sections of papers.
AcknowledgementRight. Not only is there a clear conflict of interest, the conflict is due to funding from a company that's obviously a completely fake!
Funding provided by The Initiative to Improve Childhood Health.1
Footnote
1 A fully owned subsidiary of Proctor and Johnson, Inc., manufacturers of Bac-Be-Gone ointment and Steri-Aids self-adhesive bandages.
Well played!
