Verity, 41, is shown recommending that infants be left to sleep in a separate room from their mother. She also recommends that parents feed babies at strict four-hour intervals and ignore the child no matter how much it cries.

Childcare professionals, including Mary MacLeod, the chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, say they are alarmed Channel 4 is broadcasting "such an exploitative parenting series as Bringing Up Baby".

They warn: "Many techniques in these programmes fly in the face of scientific knowledge about brain development in very young babies. That anyone should be billed as an expert and allowed to promote ideas such as not making eye contact with babies and not comforting them in distress is at best irresponsible and at worst dangerous."

MacLeod said that she would be writing to the watchdog Ofcom, urging it to force broadcasters and programme makers to be more responsible. She said: "Bringing Up Baby may masquerade as a very serious programme but it is not. It is using outmoded techniques on babies that after all cannot give their consent."