The purpose of this study was to find whether babies of between 4 weeks and 12 weeks, referred to clinics because of their crying do cry more than their non‐referred peers. In an attempt to increase the accuracy of maternal report measures and find if there were critical variables, three measures of crying were used: (1) Episode frequency (2) Mean episode duration (3) Total episode duration.These dimensions were measured using a 24 hour maternal diary and a 24 hour contemporaneous audiotape recording method.The data collected indicated that clinic‐referred babies do cry more than their non‐referred peers. They cry more frequently and for a longer total episode duration than their normative peers. These differences were significant according to maternal report data and were confirmed by audiotaped data but not at a significant level. Maternally reported frequencies for referred and non‐referred infants correlated significantly with audiotaped data. No significant differences were found between the two groups for mean episode durations and correlations for these data were inconsistent across groups.Results are discussed in the context of recent studies of infant crying and the literature concerning the validity of maternal reports.