Carry newborns upright to help improve development, says scientist

New parents should carry their babies upright rather than push them in prams to help improve their development, according to research by an award-winning scientist.

Jared Diamond, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, said parents could learn from traditional child-rearing techniques used in societies including the rainforests of Africa to improve their children’s lives.

He said: “It would be impossible, illegal, or immoral to carry out rigorous controlled experiments on western children, in order to test outcomes of different child-rearing methods.