The guidelines for parents that give birth to uncertainty

It all began back in 1946 with an American called Dr Spock and a publication called Baby and Child Care.

The paediatrician's approach to parenting trampled over conventional wisdom. It dismissed the idea that picking babies up every time they cried would cause them to be unruly and spoilt in later life, it recommended sleeping infants should be laid on their front and most revolutionary of all it told mothers, 'you know more than you think you do'.

The book became a Bible, to date selling more than 50 millions copies in 39 languages, and inspired an entire industry of experts to commit their own guides to perfect parenting to print. So much so that new mums now face an avalanche of often contradictory advice.

In the wake of research carried out into cot deaths, parents are now told to place babies on their front, no longer are they encouraged to eat for two and dietary recommendations seem to change from week to week. Having given birth, the dilemmas over how best to raise a happy, healthy child only intensify.

For every one expert who recommends controlled crying there's another who dismisses the process as barbaric and just last week the reliable mantra breast is best began to look a little shaky. The report in the British Medical Journal warned mothers feeding their babies exclusively on breast milk for the first six months could actually increase the risk of allergies and iron deficiency.

The Government has now promised to review its guidelines on breastfeeding, prompting many to wonder just how useful the plethora of information is when the rug can be pulled from under it in an instant.

"We don't complain that there are different ways to bake a cake or the fact that every month a dozen new cookery books hit the shelves," said psychologist and parenting specialist Dr Sandra Wheatley, understandably keen to put the case for the defence. "To be honest, I'd be more worried if parenting advice hadn't changed and we were still following the same decades old guidance.

"If we want research to be carried out, then we have to be prepared for the fact the results may mean the advice changes. The truth is that when it comes to babies and raising children one size doesn't fit all. New parents are desperate to do the right thing and often look for a definitive answer when it comes to the right time to move onto solids or the best way to get their baby to sleep, but methods vary dependent on the personality of the child.

"When your baby refuses to feed or when you hear of other children who sleep through the night from a few weeks old, it can feel like you're doing something wrong. The fact that there are so many books and so many online resources means that you don't have to feel alone, there will be someone somewhere who has gone through the exact same problem and come out the other side."

However, a survey of mothers from across the generations, which was carried out last year, showed how difficult separating the facts from the fiction can be. One of the women questioned, who had recently given birth, admitted she had initially stopped drinking tea after reading on the internet that caffeine could cause miscarriages in the first few weeks of pregnancy. However, when her grandmother told her it could also help ease morning sickness, her daily cuppa was reinstated.

"Taking all the guidelines too seriously leads to anxieties," said Professor Paula Nicolson from Royal Holloway, University of London, which was behind the research. "Lack of self-confidence can also lead to worry about 'doing the wrong thing' which is potentially more harmful than taking the odd glass of wine or eating soft cheese."

Within a couple of hours of the breastfeeding report being published, the discussion on internet site mumsnet had already attracted hundreds of posts.

"I think this is sometimes the problem with parenting in the modern age," said one, which summed up the overwhelming feeling. "We (including myself) rely so much on experts rather than intuition.

"Experts have their place as does scientific research, but the way we read up and research things rather than relying on what we think and what we can see has in my opinion gone too heavily the other way.

"I wish when I had my first I would have just read the signs instead of reading incessantly, going online constantly and asking everyone I knew. By my fourth child I had learnt to trust myself."