Perhaps it's a cultural thing. When my Northern Irish colleague was raising a family in Hong Kong, he would let his baby cry in her cot for five to ten minutes before going into the room.

Nothing unusual, that's generally what we do here. The baby will often settle back to sleep and learn that crying doesn't always result in attention.

But the neighbours in his apartment were aghast and would immediately knock at his door, panicking because his baby was crying and berating him for 'abandoning' her! And the next day they would continue the chastisement; apparently the local custom was to pick up a crying baby immediately.