I am confident that one day our six-year-old will sleep through the night. It may not be this week; it may take until secondary school. If we had sleep trained her, it might have been different, but I just couldn’t bear the tears. This makes me eligible to join the latest guilt trip after research in pediatrics showed that delaying bedtime and letting infants cry for short periods until they settle may be an act of kindness. Rather than causing emotional harm, it can help both parent and child sleep better.

It’s a debate that gets incredibly heated. Nearly half of mothers with babies over six months say their child has sleeping problems. Dr Michael Gradisar, lead author of a recent Australian study, says opponents tried to get the ethics committee to shut it down. The researchers randomized 43 infants with sleep problems between the ages of six and 16 months to either a usual routine, graduated extinction (allowing babies to cry for short periods over several nights) or fading (where the baby is put to bed a quarter of an hour later).

The study measured levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, to see how long it took babies to get to sleep, how often they woke and the effects on parents’ stress and children’s behaviour. A technique called the strange situation procedure tested infants’ attachment to their parents. Everyone’s sleep improved – even the control group’s – because babies naturally mature and sleep better. And attachment stayed the same. But the other groups showed larger reductions in the time it took for babies to get to sleep and their frequency of waking. Neither technique allowed infants to howl for hours in the dark.

Gradisar says his study supports earlier Australian research showing no long-term harmful effects to children. The earlier study, of 326 children, lost touch with a third during the follow-up. And the current study is small. Is this enough reassurance that sleep training will not be emotionally harmful?

You should do what you feel is right. Wendy Hall, a researcher in sleep training, argues that helping your child learn to sleep better is an important investment. It teaches them self–regulation, and sleep is essential for development. Crying, she points out, is their only form of communication, so you won’t destroy their sense of attachment by leaving them to self-soothe.

Graduated extinction has recently been rebranded as “controlled comforting”. Gradisar says more studies are needed to really answer questions about it’s safety. But it’s clear that using it or not is no marker of the quality of your parenting. But I haven’t done it, so maybe I would say that.