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No matter how deeply we love our baby, it is mostly the outward manifestations of that love that the baby can understand.
No one likes to have his communication ignored. Such a response seems to be one that is universally experienced by adults, and there is no reason to conclude that it is any different for babies and children. Few people would ignore an adult while he repeatedly said, "Can you help me? I'm not feeling right. But a baby cannot make such a statement; he can only cry and cry until someone responds - or until he gives up in despair.
Immediate response to a baby's cry went unquestioned for thousands of years until recent times. In our culture, we assume that crying is normal and unavoidable for babies. Yet in natural societies where babies are carried close to the care-giver much of the day and night for the first several months, such crying is rare. In contrast to what many in our society would expect, babies cared for in this way show self-sufficiency sooner than do babies not receiving such care.
In fact, research on early childhood experiences consistently shows that children who have enjoyed the most loving care in infancy become the most secure and loving adults, while those babies who have been forced into submissive behavior build up feelings of resentment and anger that may well be expressed later in harmful ways.
In spite of this research, most arguments for ignoring crying are based on fears of "spoiling" the baby.
A typical baby-care brochure advises the parent to "let the baby handle it for a while". Though infancy can be a challenging time for the parents, a baby is simply too young and inexperienced to "handle" the cause of the crying, whatever it may be. He cannot feed himself, change himself, or comfort himself in the way that nature intended. Clearly, it is the parents' responsibility to meet their baby's needs for nurturing, security, and love, not the baby's responsibility to meet his parents' need for peace and solitude.
The pamphlet implies that if the parents give their baby an opportunity to become self-reliant, they are helping him to mature.
But an infant is simply not capable of such maturity. True maturity reflects a strong foundation of emotional security that can only come about from the love and support of those closest to him during the earliest years. An immature person can only respond to stress in an immature way. I first encountered attachment parenting when a handful of friends started following it a few years ago.
Not yet having children myself, I nodded vaguely when they talked passionately about breastfeeding and co-sleeping. To be honest, I thought the whole thing sounded unhinged. But when I had twins last year, I understood the appeal more. Parents have never before been subjected to so much advice from so many unqualified quarters, thanks largely to — of course — the internet.
When all around you is hormonal fog and existential fear, attachment parenting offers clarity and promise: It puts its thumb right on the maternal pressure point, by asking how much of yourself you are willing to give up for your child, mixing things most mothers already know babies need human interaction with their worst fears anything less than constant devotion will cause your baby emotional harm. I wondered whether attachment parenting had actually helped anyone — and whether this was really about parenting, or something else.
So I detached from my own babies and spent two months meeting women and advocates around the country, in an effort to find out.
Since the s, attachment parenting has evolved into a fully fledged school of thought, with official organisations spreading its word: Lest anyone think this is largely a metropolitan trend, the biggest group is in Wantage, also in Oxfordshire. Derby has a thriving group, too, while those in London are relatively small. It is easy to see why attachment parenting is being embraced in Britain. It takes adages familiar from NHS leaflets and gives them extra oomph: McHale, a full-time mother, discovered attachment parenting in , when her first daughter was born.
So why did she take the same approach with her second daughter?
I ask if she has a background in this area. No, she says, but she has done an online course with the US attachment parenting branch to qualify as a peer support group leader. How would she describe it?
They're less likely to cuddle their infants, sing them lullabies, read to them, and breastfeed them. ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. I take time every day to think of my many blessings and give thanks, focusing on the abundance in my life and not the love I missed from my mom. By examining what transpired during your childhood, you'll have a greater understanding of why you wound up feeling insecure, closed off, and empty. Parenting invites adults to know their values. Because these children are on the receiving end of sensitive parenting, they become sensitive… I often watch AP children in playgroups. He said that youngsters whose needs are met by attentive parents will develop a sense of trust in the world and a hopeful spirit.
They want to carry their baby and wake up to them and feed them from the breast. A few weeks after our phone conversation, I go to Exeter to meet McHale in a hotel restaurant, with four other mothers and their children. The five of us talk over tea while the toddlers breastfeed and play in the sunshine.
But they doubted themselves, and later felt the sadness of not responding the way they wanted to. There is no doubt that babies thrive when they are loved. And when they got to school, they were given labels like ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder].
Does she think their ADHD was caused by not having an attachment? So we started giving parents simple advice, like, sit down with your children after dinner and read to them. They need the connection with you. At times such as these, AP mutates into a form of parent-blaming — the downside of a theory that promises parents total control, and full responsibility, over how their child turns out. Julie, Sylvie and Martha are members of an attachment parenting group in north London. They are all warm and sparky, and the loving bond they have with their babies is obvious.
Sylvie and Julie both opted for attachment parenting because they liked it, or, more specifically, hated the alternative. For Martha, it was a reaction against her upbringing: For Julie, co-sleeping is as much for her as her eight-month-old son. I find it difficult to mix with people who do sleep training, because they get defensive. The judging goes both ways.
Attachment parenting, on the other hand, can invest its techniques with not just efficacy, but morality: Then there is the bond they form with each other: McHale had told me mutual support was one of the main appeals of attachment parenting, and this was clear in every group I met. When I discovered other people were doing it this way, that was a huge reassurance. But there are times when attachment parenting seems to have made some women feel worse. She was about to return to work, with great regret. Of the dozens of mothers I spoke to, only one had returned to work full-time; Julie was the only one with a small baby considering it.
I ask Julie, Sylvie and Martha if they feel attachment parenting is a rejection of feminism. Absolutely not, they say, with the weary eye rolls of women who have heard this criticism before.
So we see this as a maternal feminist issue. We should be able to stay home for three to five years, without being ostracised by fellow feminists and the culture at large. Sylvie had told me: There are times when the underlying message sounds more like emotional blackmail: Although attachment parenting now appeals to the liberal, middle-class woman, it started from an anti-feminist place. Guilt In The Age Of Natural Parenting , the Sears are fundamentalist Christians with eight children; attachment parenting is modelled on their deeply religious view of the family, with the father at its head and the mother the devoted caretaker.
Tuteur tells me why she thinks AP is uniquely retrograde.