Time breastfeeding cover: Attachment parenting vs. an attached parent (+video)
(Read article summary)Time breastfeeding cover: It's as controversial for its breastfeeding toddler as for the actual content, and is all about 'The Baby Book,' the William Sears philosophy that has redefined the mother and baby relationship. But the Time magazine breastfeeding cover aside, aren't we all into "attachment" when it comes to our kids?
With all the hullabaloo over Time magazine's cover story on attachment parenting (not to mention the omg-did-you-see-that cover photo of a mom breastfeeding her 3-year-old son) I went to go find my well-worn copy of William Sears’s “The Baby Book.”
Sears is the focus of the Time article, and is often described as the father of American “attachment parenting” – a philosophy, Time’s Kate Pickert writes, that has “helped redefine the modern relationship between mother and baby.”
“The Baby Book” has become a bible of sorts for moms like the ones in her story; moms who breastfeed their children through toddlerhood, who eschew date nights with husbands in favor of nursing, who never leave their children (ever), and who happily give the marital bed over to the baby.
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Indeed, attachment parenting, as Ms. Pickert describes it, is based on three tenets: baby wearing (no bouncy seats or strollers here – baby goes in a sling next to mom), breastfeeding (as long as possible) and co-sleeping (baby in bed). As such, this “demanding brand of child rearing” asks a lot of moms, she writes, and also slips into the anti-feminist, since being a good mother in this philosophy seems to require a rather large dose of self-annihilation.
Hmmm.
Where’s that darn book?
Because, I’ll admit it, I consider myself an attachment parent. I cuddled or wore Baby M in a sling for most of her first months. (“Are we going to a Star Wars convention?” one friend asked as I expertly criss-crossed the Moby wrap around my shoulders.) She slept next to our bed in a cradle. I nursed her on demand.
