conuly

I have a long-standing rule that the more people assert a thing, the more likely it is that I should look it up for my own self.

This rule has never steered me wrong, and this is what I found out when I tried to trace the source of the claim that thumbsucking will inevitably do immense damage to your teeth and jaw: lots of sites claim this, but few of them offer any citations. Those that do all cite the same few studies, the last of which was done in the 1960s. For the record, that study states that the risk of causing damage is highest in children, whose teeth are still coming in and whose palates are still growing, and in those who actively suck on their thumbs rather than simply sticking them in their mouths and keeping them there, and, unsurprisingly, in those who spend a lot of time daily on thumbsucking instead of just a few minutes here and there.

However... it's weird that they all cite such an old article, isn't it? Thumbsucking hasn't gone away. Orthodontia is still a booming business. Surely somebody's done some new research, right? I'm not just being performatively shocked here, I actually think it's strange.