Attachment Parenting

As the name suggests attachment parenting is about fostering a nurturing environment for the child that involves the baby being in a sense attached to the primary care giver. Instead of prams, the baby is carried around in a sling, the primary care givers co sleep with the child and generally breastfeeds the child for longer than the norm in today’s society.

As the child grows the mother and father attempt to understand the biological and physical needs of the child in attempt to better raise their child. By understanding what the child’s physical and mental capabilities are the parents are better able to respond in an appropriate manner. Boundaries, rules and expectants for the child are set around this knowledge of the child’s abilities.

The main concept of this style is that attachment is a natural biological need of the child. This need for constant connection is to satisfy the infants need for social contact, love and security from its primary caregivers.

Attachment Parenting is based around eight guiding principles,

• 1. Preparation for Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting
  
• 2. Feed with Love and Respect
  
• 3. Respond with Sensitivity
  
• 4. Use Nurturing Touch
  
• 5. Engage in Nighttime Parenting
  
• 6. Provide Consistent Loving Care
  
• 7. Practice Positive Discipline
  
• 8. Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life,

There are no real hard and fast rules about these concepts, they are intended to be flexible to suit the individual needs of each parents. Some of the examples of how attachment parents practice attachment parenting are to engage in home births or natural childbirth, home-schooling, anti-vaccination, not criticizing each other or their children, natural health care and the use of organic foods.

Arguments against
One of the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) guidelines to reducing the instance of sudden infant death syndrome is to not sleep with your infant. However, many of the attachment advocates dispute this concept. Instead they state that sleeping with your infant is only dangerous if other factors are present, e.g. drugs, alcohol and so on.

The workload for the primary care givers is intensive and demanding. Many women’s movements believe that the workload is unrealistic for women who are generally the primary caregiver. Especially in today’s world where mothers are also needed to work to meet the financial needs of the family.

From my research, independent studies have yet to prove that this labor intensive style of parenting is superior to other types of parenting styles. However articles in pro-attachment websites or books, state that professionals are beginning to see that the attachment method is superior to the traditional methods of raising our children.

Regardless of these obvious contradictions about the superiority of this style of raising children, one thing did stand out when I was reading about this style of parenting.

And that is that there does not seem to be anything that harms or limits the child’s development by using this method to raise children.

So if the attachment style of parenting appeals to you go for it, if not keep looking, either way the most important thing is that you find ways to build on your parenting skills that are both beneficial to you and to your child.

Personally I don’t think I could follow the guidelines of attachment parenting, especially having the child sleep with me and the labor intensive aspects. I am afraid I would be too tired and this would reduce my effectiveness as a parent (basically over tired for me also means grumpy).

HOWEVER, I do think some of the concepts in attachment parent have fantastic merit. I am a big believer that to develop better parenting skills it is vital to know what the physical and mental capabilities and limitations of your children are. In fact it is one of the principles that I am following as I continue to develop this website into a practical resources for parents.

• More Articles on Child Developmental Stages
• Articles on how to Communicate with your child

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