Religious In the late 1960s, Gary Ezzo studied at
Mohawk Valley Community College in New York state, but did not earn a degree. In 1984, Ezzo and his wife Anne Marie Ezzo began teaching parenting classes at
Grace Community Church in
Sun Valley, California; a 10,000-member evangelical megachurch. Anne Marie Ezzo was raising two children at the time and had for a short while trained as a nurse in a hospital pediatric unit. In 1984, Anne Marie Ezzo wrote a four-page paper "Parent Controlled Feeding". In 1985, Gary Ezzo received his Master of Arts degree emphasizing Christian Education from Talbot. Subsequently, the Ezzos continued to investigate early parenting and with five other couples formed Growing Families International (GFI), organizing as a non-profit in 1987 and becoming a for-profit in 1989. Based on the earlier paper the Ezzos wrote a Christian parenting guide for GFI: ''Preparation for Parenting: Bringing God's Order to Your Baby's Day and Restful Sleep to Your Baby's Night''. The book was published in 1990. Grace Community Church was initially supportive of the Ezzos and their parenting ministry, but in 1997 after four years of discussion, the church reversed its position, criticizing them for creating a divisive atmosphere between parents following the book's practices and those who favored demand feeding for infants, sleeping with their infants, and sling-type carriers for babies. The church elders banned the books for "stifling the mother's desire to comfort her children", for ascribing Biblical qualities to the concept of scheduled feeding, and for failing to address the church's concerns regarding theological issues. The Ezzos left the church along with a few sympathetic families. The infant-rearing investigation the Ezzos conducted was performed by GFI and not published or subject to peer review. Ezzo and Bucknam wrote a new edition published in 1995:
On Becoming Baby Wise: Learn How Over 100,000 Babies Were Trained to Sleep Through the Night the Natural Way—this edition used the single word "Babywise", later split into two words: "Baby Wise". Further editions of the book were published in 1998, 2001, and 2007. Changes in the later editions include removing the assertion that the risk of
sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is not heightened by placing the baby to sleep on its belly, and removing the notion that feeding the baby whenever it appears hungry will give the mother "an abnormal hormonal condition" which could lead to
postpartum depression. ==Summary==