Even now, years later, I can still take myself back to the feelings of panic and inadequacy, of frustration and mounting anger. It is early evening: Frances, my first baby, is crying again and nothing seems to help her distress. I rock her energetically, offer her the breast, change her nappy and march her up and down, but still she yells, her face contorted and legs contracted in a whole-body protest at something hellish but undefined. Once again, I feel I have failed.

When a baby - particularly your own baby - cries, it can feel like a personal rebuke. I remember the feeling of hurt when, despite my best efforts, my third baby, Joe, cried buckets for the first three months. It couldn't be my novice status, but sheer ineptitude which was to blame. Looking back, I realise that the early months of pregnancy and days after Joe's birth had been traumatic. Somehow, he seems to have been expressing the stress I was feeling inside.

And then there was Alice. My middle child was the exception that proved the rules which eventually became the book I've just written on crying. Alice wriggled and squeaked occasionally, but she did not cry before she was six months old. I carried Alice everywhere, allowing her to doze in her sling and feed whenever she wanted. After a few months I realised I had never heard her cry, not even that bleating "la-a-a, la-a-a" which makes babies sound sweet and pitiful at the same time.

Not crying is extraordinarily rare for babies in our society. We assume - and we are often reminded - that crying is normal. Evidence varies as to exactly how normal: a large London study found that eight-week-old babies cried on average for two hours and 15 minutes a day, with an amazing 14% screaming for four hours or more. A study of six-week-old babies in Manchester revealed an enormous range - between five minutes' and five hours' crying - with an average of 43 minutes in 24 hours. When anthropologist Sheila Kitzinger surveyed 1,400 British and Australian families, she reported a daily range of between one and six hours' crying.

Of course, there is comfort in knowing that your crying baby is true to form, particularly during the early evening (when the frustrations of the day have mounted and you'd really like to put her down and make the tea ...) and at two months of age, when crying typically reaches its peak. It is estimated that children undergo 4,000 crying sessions before the age of two. But to assume that hours of crying is the unhappy lot of every human infant is not accurate, because most babies of the world cry far less than this.

There is a wealth of anecdotal and research evidence which demonstrates a sharp divide between babies raised in traditional communities and in post-industrial societies. The anecdotal evidence is unevaluated but consistent: travellers to South America, Asia and Africa report that babies - who are carried everywhere - are rarely heard to cry. Friends who have travelled off the beaten track in Japan, India, South Africa and Peru offer the same story. Equally, white babies are famous around the globe for their ability to burst into tears. According to the eminent psychoanalyst Erik H Erikson, women of the Sioux tribe in Dakota would complain at the American hospital practice of separating mother and baby at birth, because, they said, it taught the usually passive Sioux infant to "cry like a white baby".

Anthropologists validate such stories. A long-term Harvard University study of Gusii families in Kenya suggested that here were some of the quietest babies on the planet. Gusii babies cried less than half as much as American babies. When Gusii women were shown a video of an American mother and grandmother changing the nappy of a screaming baby, they became agitated. They were amazed that neither woman was able to soothe the baby's tears. Elsewhere, a study of Mexican babies found no intensive crying whatsoever, while researchers who went to Korea to study colic, evening crying and the two-month-crying peak could find no evidence for any of these phenomena.

Somewhere in the gulf between crying for hours and not crying at all, there's a story to be told. Perhaps - with reservations - even some lessons to be learned. For a start, we can say that constant crying is not physiologically "normal", because not all babies do it. However, crying is so common in our culture, that it simply cannot be fair to blame individual mothers for their babies' tears. Researchers in America, Britain and elsewhere are now considering the elements of childcare common to low-cry societies to see if any can be applied to post-industrialised nations - and in particular to solitary carers, who struggle alone and unsupported by the extended family network.

Infant crying expert Professor Ian St-James Roberts is heading a team from the Thomas Coram Research Unit in London to address the question of whether prolonged crying is a developmental or a social-cultural issue. His study will compare families in Britain, Denmark and the Central African Republic.

Experts agree that one of the strands common to all traditional cultures is a lack of cynicism when it comes to babies' needs. There is no belief that meeting a small baby's wants will spoil him, or that mother will be "wrapped around his little finger". Instead, crying is interpreted as part of a call-and-response system, requiring the swiftest possible reaction from parents, grandparents and older siblings. In this model of high-intensity care, crying is reserved for its real use - abandonment, injury and illness - and the infant does not learn to cry for the slightest thing. The irony is this: when parents make no attempt to teach the principles of delayed gratification, babies are more likely to learn it anyway.

However, it is naive to suggest that simply by following the African model, your baby will never cry. It is estimated that around 15% of western babies cannot be soothed by ordinary means, and when babies display the bundle of symptoms casually classed as "colic", there may well be a physiological explanation. Around 10% of colicky babies suffer from cow's milk intolerance. Some are irritated by air fresheners, a nut allergy, or a sensitivity to something in the nursing mother's diet; there may be any number of reasons. Unfortunately, one characteristic of colic is that, once it has set in, ordinary tactics such as jiggling and carrying the baby around will not be enough to soothe her.

The fact is that when we copy traditional methods from the outset, we need to accept our limits. White mothers living in Africa have found that, even though they carry their babies everywhere, sleep with them and nurse them on demand, their babies still tend to be more jumpy than African babies. Culture is embedded deep in our bones: our assumptions, beliefs and fears are handed down through generations and when we give birth we often have very little experience of infant handling. Perhaps the hardest time to try to correct the jitters of the past is the moment when you are presented with your own, first, real-live baby.

Surveys also tell us that mothers who have low self-esteem and post-natal depression are more likely to have babies who persistently cry. Fifty-eight per cent of women describe themselves as "depressed" six weeks after giving birth. From China, a researcher recently reported that a breakdown in traditional Chinese postnatal taboos, which allow the new mother to rest and be cared for by a whole community of women, is resulting in an increase of baby blues. Stressed mothers often have crying babies and crying babies lead to stressed mothers. It's a vicious circle which our society knows only too well.

So it's not a question of blame, or of merely throwing up our hands in despair. Although it's unfashionable to say so, the best messages in babycare are subtle and not easily described by a rigid adherence to rules. You may find that carrying your baby around helps to reduce crying and increase your confidence, especially if you can start before the colic sets in. You may equally find that baby-wearing is not enough and that personality and stressful circumstances have a huge part to play. But one thing is certain - by the time a baby reaches four months old, most of the crying will drastically subside and by the end of a year, a quarter of all babies cry for less than five minutes a day. One day, I promise, you will leave the house.

No more tears

· Try shushing: with your lips about four inches from you baby's ear, start making a "shhhh" sound, getting louder until it matches the baby's crying. Be insistent until crying subsides.

· A little extra carrying = a lot less crying. In an American study, babies carried 4.4 hours daily cried 43% less than babies carried for 2.7 hours - a difference of only 1.7 hours

· Become a fresh-air fiend: babies react badly to being cooped up all day. Put your crying baby in a sling and step outside.

· Feed baby in an upright position - on his back, he takes in more wind (as you would, if you tried to eat lying down ...)

· Take time out - the relaxed parent is less likely to communicate her stresses to the baby. Hand over to a sympathetic pair of arms whenever you can.

· When Your Baby Cries: 10 rules for soothing fretful babies and their parents by Deborah Jackson is published by Hodder & Stoughton (£7.99).