Here is a piece on well-known attachment parenting site, peaceful parenting from Dr George Wootan that would have French author, Elisabeth Badinter raising an eyebrow and “I told you so”-ing at us all.
Right off the bat Dr Wootan warns us that this will be contentious and he is not wrong, though you would have a hard time seeing that from the comments the piece has generated, which are largely in full agreement with him, in spite of the difficulties many are encountering living his one-size-fits-all parenting approach. Dr Momma’s peaceful parenting is not for the half-arsed. So, Dr Wootan’s rule on the temporary separation of toddlers from their mothers is as follows.
A mother shouldn’t leave her child until about the age of three, when he has developed some concept of time. You’ll know this has begun to happen when he understands what “yesterday,” “tomorrow,” and “this afternoon” mean, and when your child voluntarily begins to spend more time away from you on his own accord.
Wootan is at least specific, none of those wishy-washy statements about ‘as best as you can manage’ or ‘what works for you and the baby’. No, Wootan means you can’t leave your child at all until they are three; and no, not even with a loving grandparent, trusted babysitter or the devoted father. And no, certainly not so that you may return to work (unless your job is the kind where you can sneak out briefly during the toddler’s nap, but then Wootan warns, nap times can be unpredictable and who is to say this isn’t the day when your toddler will wake up a little earlier than usual from their nap? Play it safe, don’t go). Let’s face facts – you either really love your child or you don’t.
However, I believe that many women return to work not out of necessity, but because they (or their spouses) want to maintain the two-income lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. These parents need to do a little soul-searching about what they really need and not sacrifice their child’s best interests.
This is probably the right time to admit that not only am I an attachment parenting type – our children are co-sleepers, including the older one who is now five years old; I breastfeed the toddler; and we have more slings than vehicles in our house – but for the record, I am also a mother who works part of each week outside the home. I have been separating from our toddler since before he was a year old. And to be perfectly honest, Wootan’s advice doesn’t really rattle me. I have done my share of soul-searching over the last five years about being a working mother and I feel confident that our decisions have been good ones, and what’s more, that the children are ok too. But I know Wootan’s position will distress many other women in my position; I know a few years ago it would have thrown me for a loop. And while I am sure Wootan is a very caring doctor, anyone who makes a statement like that, about how women should live their lives, deserves a little scrutiny.
Wootan is aware that his advice might be restrictive. Helpfully, as father of eleven and grandparent to twenty-one children, Wootan offers a suggestion from his own experience on meeting the specifications of the no-separation-until-3 rule.
In our family, we have found that many events that would require leaving our baby or toddler at home are the ones that we don’t particularly mind missing.
Sounds a little isolating. Well, for the mother anyway. Presumably Wootan, as the father, still managed to attend plenty of events without the children, allowing him to pursue his career as a doctor, health writer and attachment parenting guru. Still, don’t bother talking injustice here, you’ve already been trumped, because everybody in this discussion on peaceful parenting is talking about the needs of the child.
Let me submit to you that the need for mother is as strong in a toddler as the need for food, and that there is no substitute for mother. When he’s tired, hurt, or upset, he needs his mother for comfort and security.. If he scrapes his knee, or gets his feelings hurt, he can’t put his need on hold for two hours until Mommy is home, and .. even Daddy – just won’t do as well as if Mommy was there.
Dr Momma likes to use ‘all caps’ when she refers to what babies NEED in her comments on this piece, just in case you didn’t get the memo about how your own considerations are really about something a little less worthy. Because really, aren’t your ‘needs’ more ‘wants’ than ‘NEEDS’?
But our struggles (in society and with ourselves) does not change a human baby’s NEEDS. And in infancy, no one else can meet these needs perfectly like Mom can. If we elect to bring a baby into this world, then we certainly should think ahead of time about how we are going to meet the needs of this new little life.
This is all very well, babies and toddlers do have needs, but I am yet to see a definitive study on exactly how often and for how long separations of a toddler from a mother can be deemed psychologically safe. Certainly there are studies about attachment disorders and critical stages of development for babies and toddlers, and studies abound about the essential need for a primary attachment (which incidentally can be someone other than the mother), but where is the conclusive study to support Wootan’s blanket statement about separation? None are referenced in the piece on peaceful parenting and as far as I am aware, correct me if I am wrong, Dr Wootan is not an expert in attachment disorders, rather he is specialising in.. nutrition.
Dr Wootan and Dr Momma, when advocating the rule of no-separation-until-3 are both envisioning a terribly privileged home – a home where every woman is partnered and every partner earns sufficient income (and health benefits) to support an entire family; one where no mother or partner has a life-threatening illness and no siblings have serious disabilities; one where women exercise full control over their reproductive choices; one where there is no violence in the home; and one where women are homogenous beings biologically destined to be prefectly suited to the demands of attachment parenting.
To be fair Wootan does allow one exception.
I would not argue that a mother who must work to support her family is doing less than her best for her children by working.
Really? Because Wootan sounds awfully unyielding throughout the rest of his piece, and if there are degrees to which it is alright for toddlers to spend some time apart from their mothers then why make the blanket statement in the first place? And if there aren’t degrees to which it is ok for toddlers to be temporarily separated from their mothers, if we really know it to be that bad for young children, if we see it as akin to these children being without food (as Wootan says in his piece ), then why is it good enough for the children of poor families? The bigger question is why isn’t Wootan directing his pressure towards those institutions which have the power to change the circumstances of poor mothers instead of generally guilt-tripping women?
Don’t get me wrong, it is my belief that the workplace has exploited a lack of awareness of children’s attachment needs to escape an obligation to shape working conditions around the lives of mothers and children. Bring on the information, promote the findings, support stay-at-home parents and legitimise their choices, and rally for those parents heartsick over the inflexibility of their working lives. But leave the blanket statements prescribing exactly how mothers should parent behind. Attachment parenting needs feminism because without feminism women’s lives have a tendency to be decontextualised and devalued, and that isn’t good for mothering. Mothering is an act that occurs in a relationship, with all the compromise that implies. It is not the subjugation of one’s needs entirely for the benefit of another. It is not an act of guilt. It is an act involving sacrifice not martyrdom. It is an act best performed by someone empowered.
(Thank you Hunter for the article tip-off).
blue milk 
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Okay. Everything you said, plus:
A) There aren’t only two logically imaginable reasons for a person (even one of the female variety!) to work: “out of necessity” or “because they (or their spouses) want to maintain the [fabulous?] two-income lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.” Personally, I do work because otherwise we couldn’t rent an apartment, seek medical care, or eat … but also because it’s important to me intellectually, emotionally, and socially, and because I feel a strong vocation to help people learn.
B) Happy, fulfilled, all-round-doing-well, non-resentful parent = better for the child. Really. My child likes it best when I’m feeling good. If working (or, say, EVER HAVING TIME ALONE) is part of the deal, then … that just proves he has a human being with needs and feelings for a mother. Oh no!
& C) I swear up and down that some children DO prefer the care and consolation of adults other than their mothers. Mine has long been totally fine with me leaving town for a conference but goes on hunger/sleeplessness strikes whenever my partner does the same. The only thing he liked me best for was breastfeeding, which was a wonderful experience but doesn’t define everything about our parenting roles forever.
Okay, I’m done 🙂 It does suck that I could never participate comfortably in AP communities, even though we babywear/self-wean/etc., basically because I say ‘no’ to ‘mommy guilt’ of all varieties.
That post on Peaceful Parenting really rattled my cage. I guess because I’m so in the thick of it — I have a pile of small children and am a stay-at-home-mom (for now) and I’ve seperated from my wee ones for all sorts of reasons ranging from I needed to (life-saving surgery) to I need to go to the grocery store and all of them plus the groceries just won’t fit in the cart, and also because I just want to, okay, Wootan? I need a little mental and emotional fucking space where I can think my thoughts without having someone scream at me, or suck on me, or poop in my loving embrace.
All the comments on Dr. Mommas website are all rah-rah-rah because she deletes the ones that disagree. I’ve had lots of comments deleted from that site — not rude comments, just dissenting from her hard-line attachment parenting which I equate with guilt-mongering, not with science or good sense or good advice like you might want to expect from someone called “Dr.”
I’m really glad you wrote the thoughtful rebuttal above to CREEPY Dr. Wootan’s cameo on Peaceful Parenting because I very much wanted to take the time to do the same thing but I needed all the babysitting I could get last week to take my son to the doctor (eye swollen shut – gosh, I hope the other two survived our absence because we soooo didn’t rush home but instead I took him to a big filed of grass and taught him to do cartwheels while his baby sister and big sister were being traumatized (lovingly cared for) by their grandmother, who, by the way, enriches their lives inestimably, and they hers.
Got to go, my two-year-old son is throwing limes down the stairs.
Your post is awesome, ” without someone scream at me, suck on me, or poop in my loving embrace” made me laugh for 5 minutes. So, SO true!!! I have 8 month old twins, and I love them to bits…but AMEN sister!
Thank you for pulling out the highlights — I started reading the article and just couldn’t get past the first few paragraphs. I think babies (even as young as 6 months) can have patience, even if they don’t know what it is. Patience for food — and patience for mama if she just happens to be at work when a scraped knee happens. Babies, toddlers can find comfort in, as you argue, a mothering relationship.
I took the time (heaven forbid!) to dye my hair last month. When I came back from a 4 hour shopping/hair treatment, Eryn was overjoyed to see me. I nursed her to sleep, and we hung out on the bed. I then took off my hijab.
When she woke up, she absolutely lost it. Where the he’ll is my mother!!?!! Who is this chemical smelling woman holding me??!! Where the flip is mom??! After freaking out myself at her reaction, I had to nurse her again for her to recognize me. Weirdest thing ever.
But every time she woke up over the next two evenings she screamed bloody murder when in my arms. She NEEDED her dad.
Amen to working to make staying at home accessible to lower income families! Really if we all rallied together to support accessibility to choices that parents want to make, we could accomplish so much more than putting down peoples choices!
Really there is no reason that making the choice to stay at home more available to mothers, or even helping more women find ways of working part time hours so that they can be able to spend at least a few hours in the evening with their child (or fathers for that matter!) then there is no reason this needs to get in the way of mother who want to work full time hours.
If for example it were found that having a nanny in the afternoon after school were more helpful than being in an afterschool program then we could help families access those services. If it were found that part of the problems lower income families face is not THAT their children are in after school care, but the QUALITY of afterschool programs, then let’s work to increase the enrichment and quality of after school programs for lower income families.
There is so much we could do if we all worked together to reform the ways it is difficult to parent. I wish that as a single mom I could work part time and have summers off. That’s a funny haha, but I do wish it were more accessible. I hate that my son will be stuck in summer programs his whole life and after school care programs, despite that I don’t think this is the end of the world.
Not only do I think (personal opinion) that it’s hard for kids to spend 10 hours away from home and have 2 hours in the evening to spend with their parent, but I will miss the time with him as well!
I think the hard thing is that lower income parents who wish that staying home were more accessible find they are up against a wall when it comes to families that choose to work full time and actively don’t want programs that help lower income families find way to stay at home with their kids.
Like wise parents who choose to work, for person rather than economic reasons get judged and put down by people who think they know better.
If we could all support each other… wouldn’t that be so nice? Imagine!
Thank you for your sensible analysis of that article – well said! (Aaah, I would like to be more specific in my praise, but my 4 1/2 month old needs to be off to nap).
By the way, Dr. Momma edits the responses, and I know that at least my critical response to this article that I wrote was never published. I feel like she may be creating an impression of almost total agreement that is false.
Reading upwards, I see that I am not the only one whose critical responses were censored on Peaceful Parenting. I am going to post your rebuttal to my local birth center’s yahoo group. I think that the AP community needs to see the criticism of these extreme views.
Another part of this that really upsets me is the complete dismissal of the dad as an active parent. My husband happens to be home a lot, and far more patient than I am. There have been many, many times when my toddler cried for him first and he has easily nurtured her as much me. He wore her in the baby carriers and she responded to his smell, etc. when she was a baby, and they are very close now.
Also, from what I understand, a lot of AP thinking is based on looking at how more “primitive” tribal cultures raise their children. From what I understand, in many tribal cultures, babies are often passed around for others to care for, not just leaving the burden always on the mother (and if it is 24/7 for 3 years, it would be burdensome). Isn’t that where the saying, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ came from?
My daughter turns one today. She is still nursing, still sleeps with us (well, she has a mattress pushed right beside our mattress to give everyone a little more room, but more or less), and has been left with someone not one of her parents exactly twice in her life. Only very recently has she even started napping away from us: for most of her life her morning naps were taken with me, and her afternoon naps were taken with her father. We rarely baby wear now, since she generally prefers to be running around, but we did when she was small.
I also returned to work full time six weeks after she was born. I am Canadian, so I did this entirely because I wanted to: we have 52 weeks of government provided maternity leave here. Now as a university professor I am both a work at home and a work outside the home mother, and this has put us in a very privileged position. My husband is home full time with her, and I am only out of the house 4 afternoons a week.
I of course notice lots of differences between my daughter and her third cousin who was born a month before her, but the salient one is this: even during her worst period of separation anxiety my daughter had a affectionate relationship with her father. During his prime separation anxiety period her cousin would scream if his father as much as came toward him.
Dr. Wootan can write me off as an unfeeling mother I suppose, but I think this is a good thing. My daughter has two people in her life that she feels completely secure with. Isn’t one of the key ideas behind attachment parenting that a child who feels secure will be in the long run more independent? Isn’t it more reassuring to know that your needs will be met by either parent, rather than having all your eggs in one basket?
You have more restraint than me. If I were writing about Dr Wootan my post title would have been the same as the last one.
What I’d say to Dr Momma – Sorry I’m beyond help as I’m an unregenerate old feminist who used – gasp – childcare, which explains why my kids are now neurotic failures. Oh wait – no they’re actually rather wonderful and well adjusted.
This was a brilliant post. I’ve had similar reservations against hardline AP – I too breastfed my babies (but not “long enough”), co-slept (ditto), wore them as long as I could (but what do you do when they hit 20 pounds at 4 1/2 months?). And I did have some part-time relief that allowed me to write and, later, teach.
The other day, I asked my younger son (now 7) if he wanted me or his dad to help him with his shower. “Daddy. Because he does it better.” I didn’t feel slighted in the least. I was so pleased that we *both* matter – that we’re both essential.
Also, your passing comment about a serious illness is so important to what I experienced – my mate spent weeks in the hospital when my younger son was just over a year. I guess I should have just let him rot in the ICU, according to Dr. Wootan? (Ha! Like Helen, I’d have an awful time staying civil about this stuff!)
I really like Chris Bobel’s research on AP and feminism, by the way – she takes a critical but sympathetic perspective, and finds that for most women, AP is not pro-feminist when it comes to actual practice. (I may have oversimplified; sorry if I did.)
Biologically there MUST be a reason why it takes more than one person to make a baby, and why when a baby is born, they are born into a complex family that (traditionally) consists of several generations. My point being that babies must benefit from having more than one person who is able to love them and meet their needs. In particular to diminish a father’s role in supplying love, comfort and security is outright sexism (and I imagine extremely convenient for a father of 11).
I kind of “dropped out” of attachment parenting as a philosophy because I find it rigid, structured and unforgiving, and geared towards blame, guilt and self-suppression. My own parenting style isn’t dissimilar to AP, but not for me are the AP playgroups where I feel my parenting style is under the microscope.
Since discovering Winnicott’s Good Enough Mother when Una was 10 months old, I trust myself a lot more, and forgive myself more readily for not collapsing my sense of self into my children. I think my inclination to start carving space out for myself intellectually, physically and emotionally is normal and healthy now, for me and my children.
Dear Dr Wootan (and Dr Momma)
Had I attachment parented in the way you describe I would not be here today writing this comment. Why, because I would have killed my child and then myself. Truly. Your method does not allow a mother any time to seek treatment or diagnosis of post-natal depression, any time to sleep deeply by herself or indeed anytime at all to recharge her batteries. This is not healthy for either the child or the mother. To raise a healthy child, the mother must herself be healthy. Some of us need more alone time than others. Making mothers feel like failures for reaching your frankly unrealistic standards, which I very much doubt you ever reached yourself, is criminal.
Arwyn at Raisingmyboychick also wrote a great response to Wootan’s article! http://www.raisingmyboychick.com/2010/07/no-less-than-threes-do-not-need-their-moms-247365/
This is a great post.
Just to outline my credentials, I can “babywear” with the best of them, my wife induced lactation so we could both nurse our second child (so we must be into breastfeeding), hell — we even did EC with our first. We’ve structured our work schedules to keep our kids home for the first 15 months and in very part-time care thereafter — so far short of that three year mark, but nothing to sneeze at. But I can’t handle hard-line AP.
I started falling out of love when I picked up Dr. Sears when my wife was pregnant with our first, desperately looking for any hint of who I might be to this child. I found out that dads (the closest thing I could find to myself as a lesbian non-bio-mom) got a whopping paragraph, and their job was to do all of the chores, and stay as far away from mother and baby as possible, keeping everyone else away, too. Apparently the best way I could parent was do the dishes and never ever touch the baby lest she never nurse again. Awesome. No thank you.
We need to be engaging non-gestational-parents (and grandparents, aunts, uncles, chosen family, cousins, brothers, sisters…) with babies, not shutting them out and cutting mom off from the rest of the world. Babies and kids need more people, more love, more connection. They get stronger, happier families thrown in as part of the bargain.
As much as I hated that initial post, the replies here and at raising my boychick are the first AP reading that has made sense to me. Thank you.
These bloody male doctors and sanctamonious hardline AP mothers really piss me off. Thank you for pointing out how damaging their guilt trips can be for vulnerable women. I also loathe the way they manage to alienate so many people from AP generally thanks to their greater prominence/volume.
There are many of us who are committed to the principles of AP without advocating for the subjugation of women and other convenient & hardline bull. I wish our more moderate approach was better known.
I couldn’t agree more that attachment parenting needs feminism. Attachment theory is just that – a theory. Holding down one variable – i.e. attachment between a child and a caregiver – is impossible, and the theorists are doing it retrospectively. Causality can’t be determined and those doing the research will say this. It’s weird what is done with the research to raise guilt and almost a type of controlling of women’s lives. Attachment is a good one to deconstruct because we are always left with a pile of rubble. Most people in our society who are not doing well – say the prison population – is not because of poor early childhood attachment, it is because of social injustices, lack of privilege and income, class. etc. I have four children and I’m a psychologist looking through a feminist lens (not saying I’m an expert here) but the way Wooton goes on about not separating until the age of three could do more harm than good for the caregiver and child … And of course doing such a thing can only be a choice based on one’s privilege and position … I’m sure those that read this blog all know this but hey it’s doesn’t hurt to be reminded … thanks Bluemilk!
So are his ELEVEN children spaced out at three-year intervals? And because they are never left alone in those three years, they somehow don’t resent being pushed aside so the next one along can get the same treatment? And an older child raised the way these people advocate is somehow not good enough to watch their brother or sister for an afternoon?
Now now, don’t apply logic to these people. It makes them have little fits wherein they curl up into little balls. 😉
RE: “I am yet to see a definitive study on exactly how often and for how long separations of a toddler from a mother can be deemed psychologically safe,” I don’t know any definitive studies, but I am eternally grateful to Sarah Blaffer Hrdy for her book, Mother Nature. She clearly admires John Bowlby and believes in parenting according to what attachment theory has shown about the needs of infants, but she applies the insights of evolutionary theory, biology, and anthropology to thoroughly investigate the nature of not just those needs, but also the capacities and needs of mothers. Hrdy also points out (again and again throughout the book) that mothers have ALWAYS (and by always she means, since at least the Pleistocene) needed to balance work and child care and have ALWAYS relied on others to help with child care, though the flexibility that many U.S. mothers have today in these arenas is certainly unprecedented. Her latest book (which I have not read) is about how we have in fact evolved to be cared for by more than just Mom. I recommend Mother Nature highly; having read it, I can see such proclamations as that by Dr. Wootan for what they are: ideological garbage that does little to promote attachment parenting, especially insofar as it fails to acknowledge the REAL challenges and needs of ACTUAL MOTHERS in society today. Yes, attachment parenting needs feminism! Thank you!
The Dr’s ideas do appeal to my inner chimp, but there has been a fairly comprehensive trashing of that paradigm over the last several tens of thousands of years and any attempt to reinstate it seems to me to be a romantic quest. i don’t trust these sorts of comments that set limits around the sorts of abilities that children under three have. esp when these limits are used to prescribe behaviour. I prefer the recognition of abilities such as adaptability, resilience and a capacity to manipulate their environment and the people in it.
i have to say of course AP needs feminism, but i’m surprised that it seems absent, as it seemed to be a significant influence on the “Earth Mother” crowd back in the seventies, leastways from my perspective as a young adolescent.
as for the attachment theories of Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, our two girls are securely attached to both their mother and me, their confidence when exploring is both satisfying and alarming, i have doubts that that would be the case had we followed this Dr’s reccomendations.
Thanks for the post blue Milk
You officially rock my world Blue Milk! While reading I was like, “take that, and That, and THAT!”
Coming from and attachment minded mama I see it is so easy to slip into the dis-empowerment and complete isolation of women. A lovely and much needed critical feminist lens on AP. Well done mama.
Aw thank you Jessica, and lovely to discover your blog.
You see this one yet?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/01/babies-dont-suffer-working-mothers
[…] bluemilk sets out the sexism of an ‘expert’ of attachment parenting. Anyone who is tempted to try this shit really should have multiples or be a single parent or both. […]
As usual the parenting gurus firmly place the responsibility for ‘good parenting’ on the mother (and father) depending on who which one we are reading. BUT – the whole point is that for those of us who live in a Western society, the system demands that we go to work – the system will not pay parents to stay at home and look after their children, and in the UK single parents are being bullied back into the workplace by threats of benefits being taken from them. So my point is – it is capitalism that forces parents to make choices about whether they work or do not work, but the parenting gurus consistently make it about individual choice. The only individual choice we have as parents is to agitate for a political system that values parenting and pays for it accordingly.
Thanks for this, bluemilk. A great post. I’ve been loosely practicing AP since my first daughter was born almost 3 years ago, but since getting post-partum depression after number 2 and continuing to deal with anxiety attacks & the threat of burning out since then, I strive only to survive this as well as I can without compromising the kids. In the first weeks after daughter number 2 was born, I was in such a vulnerable state and I got the message that I ought to buck up for the sake of the kids, which felt terrible and isolating and only compounded the issue.
I am a stay-at-home-mother–cannot afford childcare but wouldn’t mind a little help!–whose kids have a lot of trouble being left with other adults, aside from their grandparents and their father. It would be a disaster of screaming and crying and I’m not willing to leave them if it means squeezing shut the door on my screaming daughter’s face. People often make comments to me that I ought to have my kids in daycare or babysat both for their benefit (they find it weird how attached my older daughter is especially) and for mine (what am I, some kind of martyr?). I generally feel judged quite harshly about this, unfairly so, and I think this is the flip-side of the AP judging machine (where non-APers are very snippy with those who, without preaching, choose to co-sleep, extended breastfeed & whatever).
The judging machine is so awful … it also makes me very timid of the mommyblogs. Where you can sometimes see the machine in full throttle. I love AP and practice it where possible within the limitations and failings of my life (although I think the label can obscure more than it reveals so I wouldn’t necessary want to name my style as AP). Out of my kids three loved to co-sleep and one didn’t start co-sleeping unti after she was 3 years old. In certain circles I keep the AP side of my parenting secret because of the judgement I may receive and/or seem to be making of another if they are into control comfort or whatever it’s called these days. It’s the latter I fear the most. Liz you raise a valuable point about the judging machine – shit I hate that side of parenting … thanks. What are we as mothers to do??
Thanks for this post, I think it’s really exposed why I have such a bias against AP (which reading your blog all this time has entirely broken intellectually, but not entirely emotionally). I’ve heard way too many of these kind of proponents over the years, and I just instinctively equate AP with guilt. Since I have a pathological objection to guilt in parenting, I shudder every time someone mentions AP, despite my knowing better. It’ll be much easier to stamp out my remaining bias now that I can just redirect it to the likes of Wootan – the source of it in the first place.
AP as an option for mothers looking for an approach that suits them and their kids is warm and fuzzy and wonderful. AP as an unachievable ideal with built-in guilt is a horror. Damn straight AP needs feminism.
[…] Milk writes about Why attachment parenting needs feminism. leave the blanket statements prescribing exactly how mothers should parent behind. Attachment […]
[…] by blue milk I know among some areas of feminism there is a suspicion about crunchy mothers, and I see where that comes from, but blogs like Jessica Montalino’s are proof that crunchy mothers are also very often […]
I want to thank all of the parents, care-takers, kinship caregivers, and interested parties for the thoughtful comments. I am a 36-year-old non-parent. Many of my friends are (over)educated, progressive, and feminist. Recently I have had a difficult time communicating with one friend and her spouse. They are a lovely couple…good, caring, and smart. They have a sweet 3-year-old daughter. They raised her very closely to AP norms, as my friend’s mother is a child development “expert”.
It was difficult seeing my friend go through such a hard time parenting and still never questioned the philosophy. She was never without this infant, even after her spouse came home from work. When friends would visit we felt awkward because it seemed like there was no role for her very nice husband, who seemed interested in parenting and bonding more. Even at 3, the child wakes up in the middle of the night, nearly every night, is not completely toilet trained, and is very sensitive. I used to joke with my friend that I could come over and let her go for a walk, that I had no problem letting the baby cry. I am sure she thinks I am a bit of a monster.
In addition to those issues, the child has had a very difficult time adjusting to day care. This family has gone through nannies, care takers, and various day care centers–and nothing seems to work well for this child. I fear that rather than raising a healthy child, they have raised a fearful and self-centered child. Now my friend is pregnant with their second and I cannot imagine that their first is going to react well.
Aside from watching their parenting issues, it has been hard to talk to them about these issues because they are very critical of other styles. I try to stay quiet (which is not normal for me) but I figure it is better than getting into a discussion that is clearly very personal and I have no dog in this fight. The last thing I want to do is criticize “expert” grandma.
What has surprised me so much is how these intelligent, normally critically thinking people, could use this philosophy without question. I am a scholar of family politics and ideology. I cannot believe how Western-specific and nuclear-family-centered AP is based–and that AP advocates do not see how context-specific the philosophy is. I, myself, was raised in a family of seven children, by a mom who was widowed when I was young. There were relatives everywhere and my mom went back to work once I started school.
I want to tell my friend the following:
that we should not privilege the professionalization of parenting over local/traditional knowledge, that AP sounds like a fantastic and insidious way to keep woman in the home, that AP requires a male breadwinner model of family or a social policy that pays for parents to stay at home, that love-parenting is a new model in western civilization, that children are more resilient than we give them credit, that AP is sexist for the ways in which it undermines the father’s role, that rarely in any civilization have women had time to bond so much with children. If, god forbid, something happened to her spouse, she would be out of touch career-wise and with kids to support on her own.
I have many friends who are raising children with the help of day care centers, nannies, family, friends, and neighbors. Their children are beautiful, well-adjusted, smart, and curious. I know from my friends that there is a lot of guilt associated with parenting, work, or both. My position is that a child that is loved and secure is far ahead of many children who must endure the loss of parents, forms of abuse, or extreme deprivation. I mean, really, the large majority of the world’s population struggles for daily income support and yet even many of those children turn out fine under very difficult conditions. I worked in social services for years and saw teenagers raise healthy children. All of this child-centered fetishism is quite worrisome to me on a cultural level and blaming mothers is just another round of what woman have had to listen to for centuries.
Good luck to all of you as you navigate these parenting politics. Peace to you and children.
Wow, I AP and feed on cue and right from the start of the article I was confused- I actually have had a first cue come up in situations where we would be able to feed more comfortably and conveniently at home in like half an hour, and I *have* told my baby- younger than six months- that we would be home soon and we’d sit down and eat. As long as she’s just starting to cue she has handled those situations with patience. AP allows a trust to develop that fosters some level of patience. By the time they are toddlers, staying with a trusted relative- or DAD for goodness’ sake- while Mom works part time or writes or goes for a walk or gets her hair done or so on, is not going to feel scary or dangerous to an AP-parented child. The whole POINT of AP is to that it allows a little one to develop confidence. AP kids precisely DON’T cling to only one adult because their attachment needs have been met instead of thwarted. And those needs don’t all have to be met by one person.
I don’t like how he lets everyone else off the hook and leans it all on the Mom. Someone above noted a researcher who concluded that AP kind of works against feminism in modern society. While that may be true in practice- for example, in order to do AP at a geographic remove from my extended family and in a society that relies on money (instead of gathering and gardening as is traditional for humans evolutionarily) and a society does almost NOTHING to make it routinely possible for children to be present while earning income, I have to handle a lot of the child care, rely on my partner’s income, and not have much economic independence- that is NOT the fault of AP, it is the fault of modern society. In ideal conditions AP takes place in a wide support network of family and all the pressure is not on just one or even just two people. Feminism and AP ought to serve each others’ needs by arguing for a just society closer to the egalitarian way nature intended humans to live (the type of culture that helps us fit our ecological niche best), where people reside in matrilocal extended family homes, descent is matrilineal (thus removing the patrilineal need to control women and children for inheritance purposes), egalitarian matrist values encourage community support, and work life is not compartmentally separated from family life (and nature). Oy, don’t get me started! It’s an iceberg for me and I’ve only mentioned the tip!
A quick follow-up- even AP style breastfeeding is not always all done by one person. In some tribal cultures the babies get passed around all day, and whichever lactating women is nearby when a baby cues feeds her. All those people are her milk-aunts when she grows up. As another commenter said, the origins of AP are based on tribal practices that are also the origins of “it takes a village.” The people in those cultures would probably wonder why Dr. Wooten- and Western culture in general- would want anyone to deprive a child of her natural right to be cared for by the entire community.
Emm- you joke that would let the baby cry. AP does not teach that babies need only Mom, it teaches that they need responded to. Crying is how a baby communicates. This is truly traditional knowledge, tribal knowledge. AP does not preference nuclear families, society does, and the results leave AP dysfunctionally confined to nuclear family units. If your friend could trust others to respond to her child properly- NOT let the child cry- she could have more freedom. Insecurity like hers and her child’s develops because society is damaged and the community around us can’t be trusted to help share parenting in a proper, responsive way. AP is ideally a community venture. Patriarchy is the problem holding women down, NOT AP. Even a single Mom could AP if she had her family around and they didn’t have dumb ideas like let the baby cry, or even if people just didn’t give single Moms so much crap about using welfare exactly the way it was meant to be used, to support single Moms in staying home to care for their kids.
The commenter somewhere above who says Dr. Sears wants the partner to do the dishes and stay away and keep everyone else away might be mixing him up with the other Dr. Sears (his son) or someone else. The older Dr. Sears does think that the partner should help out with chores (what’s wrong with that?), but he also advocates father involvement to a degree so crunchy that my vegan wild-food-gathering male nurse and great Dad partner is not even crunchy enough to be doing all the things Dr. Sears suggests Dads do, such as skin-to-skin and slingwearing. Sears also suggests that older siblings be encouraged to wear baby and that grandparents, sitters, and daycare providers be educated so that everyone can be offering attachment opportunities and Moms can have a break or work if needed or chosen. He also repeatedly states that parents adjust AP to their own needs and do what works for them in real life and not follow it like a religion.
Those who believe that AP comes from the traditional knowledge of parenting need to review their history. AP comes strictly from the post-World War II debates in England in which Bowlby and Winnicott debated with child analysts and psychoanalysts over child-bonding, absent fathering, and bonding. Many scholars contend that the movement was invoked as a method to return women who had been working during the war to the home so that males could take up their position in the industrial workplace. An ideology of mother attachment was an ideal way to further buttress patriarchal society. Do you really think your great grandmothers passed children around the farm as they worked? I think not. The children more likely sat in the field with other kids, perhaps with someone watching and perhaps not. Some AP proponents might invoke traditional knowledge and societies in order to support these theories, but this is quite disturbing and patronizing, to me and many post-colonial theorists. What it does is naturalize other economic systems–acting as if they are natural, normal, not problematic, and a-historical themselves. Do you really think women in Uganda for instance enjoy carrying their babies on their backs as they farm fields? Don’t you think they would gladly have the other parent or another family member care for the child as they worked and maintained financial independence?
This is like foodies espousing local/organic produce. In countries with little refrigeration and who rely on selling their goods on the open market, these theories strike them as self serving, western, philosophy–a conservative response to globalization cloaked in a liberal coat. After the global north/west created a system of industrial ag, we now want to buy local.
Now, I am not saying that these developments are good developments. But I think it important to be careful what is being sold as “liberal” or “progressive” parenting. I am also not certain that it is helpful to a raise a child in a manner in which they are not prepared for their lives ahead. We all know many stories about children raised on communes who have problems adjusting once they attend school or leave for college. The world is certainly a disturbing place and the point that it is not the problem of AP but society itself is an interesting one; however, let’s not kid ourselves and pretend that we can fix society with some AP parenting.
Emm: I think you’re muddling things up when you equate responsive parenting to “raising a child in a manner in whcih they are not prepared for their lives ahead”.
All the responsive-parenting parents I know have as the central tenet of their parenting a respect for the child’s cues and developmental status. This includes not just offers parental responsiveness when the child needs it (particularly as an infant and very young child), but also respecting the child’s needs for gradual shift for independence. I don’t know: would you call a seven year old who gets himself to and from school, to and from friend’s places within a few blocks, and handles all his own interactions with librarians, shopkeepers etc someone who “isn’t prepared for his life ahead”? That’s my responsively-parented kid, who seems to be adjusting to the world just fine. (Story from last week: we sat down at a restaurant, the wait person came along, and the Lad immediately greeted her and asked, solemnly, “What is the soup of the day, please?” Possibly adorable only to his own parents, but I was amused.)
In my opinion, kids who are feel secure with their caregivers (note plural) in infancy are better placed to seek true independence when they’re ready, not worse.
Smothering/helicoptering is very much NOT the same thing as AP/responsiveness. I get the feeling you’re imagining a child in a sling until puberty or something, or sequestered on an isolated property with no contact with society (the ‘commune’ reference). That is a pretty deep misunderstanding of the process and practice as it exists today.
Thanks lauredhel for being here on this thread when I wasn’t. Pretty much said exactly what I wanted to say.
[…] anyway, why is everyone picking on attachment parenting? Well, certainly things like this don’t help. In reality all parenting philosophies have their share of zealots promoting ideas […]
[…] But, fear not! Because to counter this nonsense, we have these responses at Raising My Boychick and Blue Milk. I need not say […]
What’s wrong with it is that “help out” frames one partner as the owner of the chores and the other one as the person who just helps, rather than both partners taking ownership of the domestic work and not having to be told or directed. (Blue, I tend to harp on this one a bit, I know; I just see it everyhere in the MSM, the use of “helping” as a concept in discussing the sharing of the domestic workload, so I’m kind of adopting it as my zombie-idea-to-be-killed of the year!)
I am a SAHM who rarely leaves her toddler, and this article pissed me off. Wooten completely ignores the Dads role in a child life, how insulting.
I wonder if he calls it babysitting when his wife leaves him with the kids !
Great response, and too all those who were censored by peaceful parenting, are you REALLY shocked, they are famous for that, LOL
[…] from great bloggers. If they’re not already on your reading list, please check them out. Why attachment parenting needs feminism by blue milk Feminist readers, have you leveled up? at […]
Thank you for calling attention to this. I too had a comment deleted from PP.
Our family is AP. However, I work outside the home while the child’s father is home with the child. Our child, like the child of a professor upthread, is attached to both of us, as well as to her grandfather. It is indeed ridiculous to assume that fathers are not equally capable of parenting children. That’s why it is attachment parenting, not attachment mothering. Nor do I believe that it is unhealthy in any way to send your child into a group setting to be cared for. Some children really respond to group care, and I’ve never seen stronger bonds between children and parents than those of my friends who do use care providers outside the home. Parenting is not limited to an 8-hour-a-day span, nor is it limited by gender or sex. Let’s get some AP feminist dialogue going for sure!
First off, I’m grateful for this blog post and for being fair and presenting balanced views.
For the first couple of years baby needs mother more than father. Nature intended it that way. That’s why breast is best – for both mom and baby. Period.
Just as it takes a father 2 seconds to conceive but it takes a mother 9 months to carry the child – so too, the natural burden/blessing of raising the child falls on the mother – at least in the early years. There was once such as thing as 3 years maturnity leave. That’s what we need to advocate for, not more day care centers. Nature intended for mothers to rear their young, that’s why our bodies and babies bodies were created to fit together so perfectly.
IMHO there are no good mothers and bad mothers. There is only “mothering” and “not mothering”. When, for example, a mother leaves her baby/child with another person she is “not mothering”. We need a better definition for what “mothering” means.
There should be a gradual weaning period from AP during which the child who is ready for “not mothering” can form other kinds of attachments. The mother-child bond is special, it can’t be duplicated. A mother who is attached to her child will sense when that child is ready – every kid is different.
A real feminism would not run from AP in the fear that it will lock women back into home with no chance of escape. A real feminism would honour the physiology of the material body, and the very real body-mind-spirit link between baby and mother that continues into toddlerhood. A real feminism would advocate to celebrate that, not seek to destroy it. Most who seek to destroy it are coming from a mountain of guilt, IMHO.
I managed to raise three children without pacifiers or bottles. I was constantly told “What a good baby!” It was not their goodness but my gut response to their cues that allowed the mothering to be in perfect sync with my babies growing up. The oldest is 19 now. My kids are all beautiful people – who care deeply about others. The origin of empathy starts in a mother’s arms… It builds a foundation for caring, being truly human – in the idea of “humane” because it brings out our inner divinity.
Not all mothers have the priviledge of raising their own young. I see AP as a benchmark of an ideal situation. Benchmarks are needed to raise society’s standards and preserve the best ideals civilization has to offer. Without the best benchmarks, we revert to savagery…and there is a lot of that going on today (moral degradation everywhere, social injustice, apathy…) Neufeld and Mate’s book Hold On To Your Kids… raises the bar, and reminds us it’s time to recreate the Attachment Village.
Those who have experienced the powerful bonding of AP will know what I mean. It opens the soul to one of the most beautiful experiences a human being can know.
I can’t imagine where that “mountain of guilt” comes from. /sarcasm
Those are some pretty bold, broad and normative statements you’ve got there. Not only is AP the only one true way to parent, mother-does-it-all for the first few years is the only way to AP.
I completely support a push to make it possible for parents to spend more time raising their kids, and for that to be valued work, but telling me your way of parenting is the Gold Standard that produces perfect children is unlikely to grab my support of anything much else. I’m not much of a fan of the “nature intended” argument. Nature didn’t intend a global community of electronically connected people, but I’m definitely in favour of that.
Incidentally, the main tenet of my own parenting is Parenting Without Guilt, so I’m not coming from that mountain you speak of.
Maybe “guilt” is the voice of of thousands of years of gut instinct built into the DNA.
No, AP is not the “only one true way to parent” but it is the best way – a Gold Standard as you say.
I never said AP produces perfect children, but I will say it gives human beings the best possible start in life – which allows for a greater POSSIBILITY of their living to their fullest potential. After AP they’re on their own, but their foundations will be strong and deep. AP continues where the umbilical cord leaves off.
Dr. Eliot Barker, who founded the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, wrote that in all his years of psychiatric service to rapists and murders he had yet to find one that was raised with AP. He felt that the human being’s capacity to feel empathy for another human being starts with that. Years later Dr. Gabor Mate noticed the same thing with drug addicts.
I don’t have much interest in feminists who advocate for guilt-free parenting. I think guilt has a reason for existing. It’s trying to tell us that something isn’t right! And there is a saying: the heart has reasons reason can’t deny 🙂
p.s. A suggested policy change – for a better world: http://daycareinfo.net/gpopolicy2006.html
What, so adopted children can never experience good mothering? Good mothering only occurs when a mother ignores everything else but her child? Sorry, but I don’t think so.
I really don’t need guilt to tell me something’s going wrong. Guilt is only even reasonable if something’s going wrong and I’m not doing anything about it. I don’t let that happen – not from any moral high ground, but because all our lives are better if we address problems as they arise. I’m pretty confident guilt isn’t built into my DNA, I’m absolutely sure it’s an emotion that comes from a much more complex interplay of socialisation and the kind of brain you were born with. I don’t think it’s essential to any kind of parenting, AP or otherwise.
Claiming your own version of your own choice of parenting style is a Gold Standard – by definition better than any other – is an excellent way to induce guilt in other people though, especially mothers. At the risk of putting words in her mouth, I think that sort of thing is largely what blue milk was objecting to in the OP.
If you don’t feel guilty then my words would not bother you.
Uma, it is nice that you found a parenting style that really makes sense to you and that you get so much enjoyment from it, and I get that because I am an APing type too, and I love this kind of parenting (mostly) and it feels right for me, too.. but the sanctimony, it burns. Let’s turn it down a notch.
Also, Gabor Mate, am not a fan:
https://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/some-parenting-books-i-dont-like/
And while we’re at it, let’s cut the judgementalism – especially about people with substance abuse problems and their parents who love them.
Sounds like you’re being pretty judgmental about me. Delete my posts if they bother you that much. Why make controversial points and invite comments here and then expect everyone to agree with you? Too bad babies can’t comment here – they’d vote for mommy’s undivided attention for sure. …that is, except for the healthy attached ones, babies who feel safe to venture out and explore other attachments – the ones who are not forced out of mother’s arms prematurely.
I do wish mothers would focus on nursing their children (including their children’s emotional needs) rather than focus on nursing their own feelings. If this is the feminism you are proposing, I have no interest in it.
I’m grateful to brave professionals like Gabor Mate who see the light and are willing to go against the grain to speak out about it.
Feminism by and large has done a great disservice to motherhood – has created one more wedge between mother and child by ignoring mothering instinct and the very real power it has to promote healthy AP.
As microcosm, so macrocosm. The patriarchal forces that have infected feminism are destroying mother earth too. Because it’s all about me me me, not the other person.
Uma when I was with my 3 year old and my baby 24/7 I was having nightmares about their bodies hanging in my garage with me beside them. That’s why I didn’t attachment parent. I think the fact that we are a) all here today and b) still sane makes the fact that I chose not to attachment parent a good thing. Nothing you say can change my mind about that. Trying to make mothers feel guilty about not wanting to be with their children 24/7 is not feminist. Some mothers need to take care of their own feelings in order to be able to mother their children. Being locked into someone’s idea of what a mother should be sounds more like the patriarchy to me.
Mindy, I didn’t have any creepy nightmares about my kids when I was doing the AP – or kangaroo care as it’s sometimes called. On the contrary, I remember it as a very beautiful time and to me it will always be a gold standard of parenting. I remember being at a La Leche League conference in a gymnasium with moms and maybe 200 babies and thinking “wow – not not cry to be heard”. 200 happily attached babies. Now that’s not a sight you see every day, unfortunately.
To me, it was never only about what “I want” – but about what my children NEED. It wasn’t all roses – I had to make sacrifices, although AP made my life much easier. I have very little sympathy for mothers who complain complain complain. As soon as moms saw me breastfeeding they would immediately get all defensive and I would try to reassure them that their kids were probably just fine LOL. Certainly without AP human beings can survive – but with AP they have the potential to thrive.
AP calls for unconditional love and sacrifices. Some mothers have boundaries about that. So there are gold standards even within AP. To each her own. Society needs to create better supports and role models or the standards will just keep dropping. Angela Jolie with her army of nannies isn’t my idea of a model of motherhood. It’s just a facade. In my case I was strongly motivated to give my children 200% of me – and my AP extended into homeschooling. I was blessed to be able to glimpse what a golden early childhood could be like, and the possibilities for our world. 🙂
I think you missed my point Uma – kangaroo care was not physically possible for me, and I am physically able. Kangaroo care is not possible for many parents for all sorts of reasons. To suggest that somehow children are missing out because of this is pretty crappy. I tried to give my children all I had but a little thing called PND got in the way. I’m glad you didn’t have nightmares when you did AP. I’m glad AP works so well for you, but please listen – labelling anything gold standard is just making other parents feel inadequate for nothing. There is no one way to parent, no golden way that will lead to super humkans. Please stop suggesting that there is.
Sorry Mindy but I will not lower my standards for anybody. Remember that it’s just my opinion and you don’t have to take it seriously if you don’t want to. I believe that children are resilient beings and if life circumstances are harsh some of them will do just as fine as children who had all the breaks – how’s that? We don’t have to agree. We can agree to disagree. I am about to enter the field of social work – about to face some of the lowest standards of parenting there are, so I am extremely interested in standards, government policy and all that. Social workers have to make decisions about which parents are fit for parenting. Although this is one extreme and AP is the other end, I do feel my points are important and that ongoing discussion is important (although not in this thread – it’s like beating a dead horse in here). Perhaps one day you will be in a more objective space where emotions don’t come up and you don’t take it all so personally.
Uma, the point is there is more than gold standard. There is bad parenting. Some kids will survive bad parenting, as you say. On the other hand, I think the way I was raised was also a gold standard. My mother had a different set of priorities, in terms of of what she considered most important for us, not in terms of mother and child competing for importance. It isn’t a single line between bad parenting and AP, there are other forms of excellent parenting.
My mother made the decisions she made because she felt it was best for us. She copped a lot of flak for it too – she didn’t parent the way the people around her told her to. Very, very much like the AP parents I know and admire. Gold standard parenting is about thinking about parenting, it’s about constantly responding to the changing needs of the whole family and making sure that everyone grows feeling loved, belonging, strong, capable and all those other good things we want out of life. AP can certainly be a way to achieve that. I’ve learned a great deal about it, reading blue milk’s blog and I think it has a lot to offer people for whom it works. But I also think my mother’s approach was equally awesome, if very different. I look around and see a lot of tremendous parenting, along with some less than wonderful parenting, and the only common thread I can see is how much thought and preparedness for adaptation there is.
So no-one’s asking you to lower your standards, nor is anyone saying you shouldn’t parent that way. Just that AP is not a one size fits all solution. There are many paths to parenting success.
A human is not a kangaroo. Just saying.
Ariane –
I think what you’re saying is that: what’s important is that we try our best. I totally agree with that. I agree that AP is not a one size fits all solution – that’s why I wrote several times that it’s a privilege (ironically the poor of the global south have no other choice). In the global north it tends to be a white middle class phenomenon. My thing is the socio-cultural perspective, not the individual one per say. I feel very strongly that high standards need to be in place – from a United Nations and World Health Organization platform – and that governments at all levels around the world need to remember what the “ideal” is – the ideal that humanity as a whole can agree with. This is not to judge everybody but to create supports for such an ideal and to preserve the rights of the innocent. I know I’m getting into contentious territory here but I also know I am right on this point. My view may appear extreme in this context but I too am trying my best – and I have decided that AP is best. Yes as you say there are many paths to parenting success, but as a society which ones are we supporting? That is also important. That’s where I’m going with this.
Helen,
The origin of the term “kangaroo care” refers to a practice nurses started in a maternity ward – carrying babies rather than leaving them for long periods in their cots. It was found that the babies did much better this way. Archeologists would tend to agree that one of the first, if the the first tool, made by humans would have been some sort of sling for carrying babies. Unlike monkeys, our primate ancestors, human babies aren’t able to hang on to mother without support.
The key word here ladies is “support”
But have you studied kangaroos? I mean, you would need to have a caesarian halfway through your pregnancy, when the kid is still an embryo. (I know kangaroos don’t have surgery, but this appears to be the only way for humans to mimic this process, so work with me here.) Then you would need to carry the embryo around in, I don’t know, maybe a crumpler bag or similar with a baby NICU setup inside. Although for the truly dedicated, I recently discovered there is a procedure called marsupialisation, which I guess could be adapted.
Wow, I wish I had such faith that my parenting was the ‘gold standard.’ It must be quite pleasant going through life feeling that self-righteous and smug. At least, a lot more pleasant than the constant self-reflection and critical examination that I subject my own parenting to on a daily basis.
I thought kangaroo care was a technique employed specifically for premature or low birth-weight infants to recreate the environment of the womb for the first few weeks of their life. Ie, it’s a specific therapy to treat a specific set of problems.
I’ve certainly yet to find any wide-scale scientific studies that prove that it’ll stop our children from turning into rapists.
I always get very twitchy when people throw around arguments based on what “tribal people” or “our ancestors” did because frankly, they’re usually talking made up pseudo-racist rubbish that romanticises the “noble savage”. They often have very little idea of what tribal life might actually be like and envisage some sort of pre-industrial Eden where everyone sat around being thin and beautiful and eating tropical fruit all day.
Archaeology and anthropology shows us that human behaviours and customs are hugely diverse the world over and that there aren’t any human cultures that exist without violence or social problems or rigid heirarchies etc etc.
And from what I’ve read it not only seems there was a wide range range of parenting styles employed by “tribal societies” but some we would find fairly horrific – Navajo people used to swaddle their children for years, day and night, for instance. I can’t see you finding many people who’d be all in favour of swaddling a fourteen month old for 22 hours a day.
But one key element that does actually seem to be very important across societies is the model of shared care. A woman might have a baby, but her child would be cared for within an extended family group – older siblings, aunties, grandmothers, etc.
So the idea that “in nature”, whatever that means, women held their babies for three years and never let another human being touch them seems to be based on a profound misunderstanding of how human society has functioned in the past.
Now of course we live in a completely different time when extended familial links are generally less close, family groups are smaller and there are different pressures on woman with children interacting with out broader society, and the idea that we can recreate some “gold standard” parenting ideal based on a romaticised past that probably never existed seems not only ridiculous but dangerously close to woman-blaming.
Una has in her wisdom decided to lay the blame for society’s ills on mothers not following her “gold standard” (not that she’s outlined exactly what this gold standard might be, just to make it abundantly clear that it’s not what everyone else is doing and to suggest women who cannot follow the dictums of AP are failing their children) which to me bears some really offensive echoes to historical discourses of how women were to blame for their children becoming autistic or homosexual.
What a brilliant post. Thanks!
Very well said! AP came about largely after WW II when there was an intense subsidization of and focus on nuclear family households by global north/western industrial states, post-war thriving economies (in US and northern Europe) which created conditions of low divorce and smaller families, and natalistic social welfare programs (in the case of northern Europe and nordic countries). There is nothing “natural” about the parenting style; it is wholly formed by the social and economic conditions of the countries in which followers reside.
I find it very strange how strict AP promoters remove the parenting style from our social conditions while attempting to buttress the approach with claims of naturalness. Since apparently according to strict AP promoters, pre-industrial living is what we should desire… shall we go back and seek high child mortality rates and violence against women? The rhetoric really borders on the pathological.
Be well.
Uma, you now say your concern is about structural support, and yet the vast, vast majority of your criticism here has been directed at mothers. Everyone – including myself, not even a parent – has reacted to your tendency to criticise women for complaining, or for not doing a good enough job, or for being, by implication, selfish (which, ffs. A whole other set of gender issues right there). If you had suggested that women needed to be supported to make AP possible if they desire it (given that, as you now seem to be conceding, it’s not for everyone everywhere), no one would have had an issue. Instead, you’ve attributed irrationality and guilt to people who have very carefully and patiently unpicked the fallacious arguments you’ve made about What Women Ought To Do Because It Worked For Me And My Kids (universalisation from one’s own experience will always get you into trouble, methinks).
And for the record, I’m with Anti_Kate. The ideologies that people smuggle into these kinds of conversation by claiming them to be evolutionarily given or natural or whatever are usually both massively conservative and singularly mistaken about the supposed sameness of what is actually extraordinarily diverse human histories. I’m always intrigued by the way ‘the natural’ becomes a hold-all for ‘that which I cannot prove but want to situate as unquestionable’. Intrigued and often irritated.
Wow I’ve rattled a lot of cages haven’t I? Glad you’re all at least thinking about it. If it was nonsense it wouldn’t bother you, neither would you react so defensively. I rest my case.
These reactions aren’t defensive – disagreement, which points out the flaws in your argument and highlights that your approach is damaging to women isn’t defensive, it’s to be expected.
It is nonsense to suggest that there is one gold standard for parenting, and that your set of values are the only valid ones. I’m not much of a fan of nonsense that puts people down, so I tend to respond. It bothers me *because* it’s nonsense, and the kind of nonsense that women have been listening to forever. The kind that blames women.
Please don’t presume to know my emotions, or those of anyone else. It’s arrogant, and unlikely to be right.
Actually, Uma, your comments have barely created a ripple here compared to the comments sections on most of bluemilk’s posts. I think most of bluemilk’s readers are just rolling their eyes and thinking you are a bit nuts. I could write thousands of words on why you are utterly misguided but really can’t be bothered. And luckily I have other generous commentators to do that for me.
“In both humans and chimpanzees, the maternal bond is extremely strong and important, because the bond is necessary for infant survival and development. In fact, the strength of the bond shared between mother and infant can actually determine whether the infant will survive”:
http://sfccanth.wetpaint.com/page/Ashley+Rowe%3A+“The+Power+of+Touch-+the+importance+of+mother+infant+bonds+in+chimpanzees+and+humans.
This excellent article also touches on the concept of “strange attachment” (Mary Ainsworth) when insecure children are separated from their mothers, the Harlow experiment, and the Romanian orphanage narrative.
Karla T. Washington, “Attachment and Alternatives: Theory in Child Welfare Research” in Advances in Social Work, 9(1) Spring 2008, 8-16:
“Some professionals who use attachment perspectives in their work consider themselves to be feminists and disagree with criticisms of the theory. They explain that attachment theory actually honors women and the significant contributions that female caregivers make to society”
referring to:
Harvey, A. M. (2003). Interview with Dr. Margaret Keiley: A feminist journey to attachment theory. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 15(1), 65-71
Cook article:
http://www.naturalchild.org/peter_cook/feminism.html
“Equality feminism relies on the (largely misconceived) dogma that gender differences are social constructs, and it prescribes equal treatment for girls and boys in education, careers and domestic situations. But Tooley summarises evidence that some female/male differences, such as certain abilities, interests, and mate-selection choices, appear to be biologically-based, conferring special benefits on the human species. So assumptions that they should be “corrected” may be misguided and difficult to implement.
Liberation feminism (a related concept is “maternal feminism”) takes it for granted that there should be equality of opportunity and remuneration, but regards biologically-based differences as important, especially in cognitive abilities, mating interests, and mothering – a term which equality feminism repudiated in favour of “parenting”.”
and
“Penelope Leach (1997) reported that, when asked what care they considered likely to be best from birth to 36 months, most infant mental health professionals privately believed that from the infant’s point of view it is “very important” for babies to have their mothers available to them “through most of each 24 hours” for more than a year (mean age 15 months), and “ideal” for infants to be cared for “principally by their mothers” for durations averaging 27 months. These were the opinions of the 450 respondents (from 56 countries) of the 902 members of the World Association for Infant Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, who answered a confidential, anonymous survey. Leach concluded: “Those findings suggest that there are many professionals in infant mental health who believe that children’s best interests would be served by patterns of early child care diametrically opposed to those politicians promise, policy-makers aspire to provide and parents strive to find”.”
[…] attachment parenting and fathering as part of launching my new Go Fatherhood site and bumped into a thought-provoking article on a mom blog that claims attachment parenting requires the mom to be a supporter of […]
[…] Does attachment parenting require feminism? from API Speaks, which is a critique of one of my old pieces, Why attachment parenting needs feminism. […]
It seems like “mom and baby need to be together constantly until the child is 3!” is really a new, western idea. In many cultures, grandparents, aunts, older siblings, cousins, etc, all help each other out. Today, families are frequently spread all over the world and grandparents are often still in the workforce, so parents seek assistance from babysitters and daycare centers. I don’t think it’s necessary or natural for babies and toddlers to attached at the hip to their moms.
I too am an AP dropout, and five years later a surprisingly still-traumatized one! I can’t respond to young moms talking to me about attachment parenting without going a little ballistic. 😉 My memories of trying to do things the AP Way are very negative. It felt like the world was closing in on me and I was just supposed to cheerily suck it up till the kid turned five or so.
Having a second baby just BROKE me.
When Kid Two was six months old I had a total nervous breakdown, sleep-trained them both in the space of four weeks, and never looked back.
Either you love your kid or you don’t! Yes! lol
But… on the other hand, I think even your own child’s happiness should never become more important than your sense of integrity– at some point, you have to decide your own life IS actually yours and nobody else’s, that you and your child are actually separate people.
It’s probably going to happen by puberty, at the very latest, anyway. I prefer to start drawing that line a lot earlier than Dr Sears would, is all.
After sleep-training, life was so good that I went on to have two more kids. Sleep-trained them both from early on. Neither co-slept for any more than a handful of nights.
Neither went to daycare or drank formula, either, as I can’t afford it, but my latter two kids are actually developmentally much worse of, both with major speech delays. My eldest, who I APed out the wazoo till he was two, is actually the worst-off in terms of speech. He is almost seven and still has pretty major issues– which the local public school system has been awesome with.
But my last kid, “ignored” in his own crib from six weeks, is on-track at age two. 😉
Whether that has anything to do with how they were raised is probably impossible to say.
Now, it could just be my personal experience coloring it, but now when I see the haggard moms with their slings and their breastfeeding toddlers, I just feel SORRY for them. And for their mates, too!
As you say, parenting doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and the quality of the relationship between the spouses is more important than your weaning technique. and relationships of ANY kind are way more dynamic than “how attached are you?”
correct that: I mean, “my EARLIER two kids are developmentally worse-off.”
Or my latter two are better-off.
Proofreading is good, mmmkay? 😉
[…] about my thoughts on where the resurgence in attachment parenting fits with feminism. I raised a number of challenges but I also higlighted what I see as harmonies between feminism and this style of […]
[…] it cause?, Feminism and attachment parenting and why they’ve more in common than in conflict, Why attachment parenting needs feminism, Can attachment parenting be saved?, and The accidental attachment parent. Share […]
[…] go by the standards of other more extreme attachment parents, such as “Uma” who made her views known on bluemilk last year, then I don’t come up to […]
[…] go by the standards of other more extreme attachment parents, such as “Uma” who made her views known on bluemilk last year, then I don’t come up to […]
[…] panel event recently or the transman breastfeeding his son that I wrote about recently. I get that some attachment parenting types aren’t all that feminist. It’s a battle out there for feminist mothers everywhere, you […]
This is so great, so glad I found it. I have been writing recently about the same theme – all parenting needs feminism. I find this particularly offensive “And in infancy, no one else can meet these needs perfectly like Mom can.” I think it’s important not only to point out how these positions oppress women, but also how they oppress men. How can we expect men to equal parent if we make statements like this? In other cultures, and at other times in our own culture the idea that mothers had some special ability to do infant care did not exist. Each family has to feel able to make the right decisions for them without feeling like children are going to be damaged. Way more of my thoughts on this here:
http://www.undercoverinthesuburbs.com/2012/05/21/no-more-martyr-mommy-10-ways-to-end-the-mommy-wars-and-free-ourselves-from-one-size-fits-all-motherhood/
i once asked a shrink what was the number one complaint for which he treated me. he said, they all lose their wives when the first baby comes along. the girl they married disapppears. i said, what do you tell them? he said, get her back. woo her back.
that, of course, is for married people.
as you suggest, the white privilege aspects of attachment parenting are almost too huge to comprehend.
“…for which he treated men.” a thousand pardons.
Oh thank you thank you thank you for being part of the small chorus who is begining to talk about this. I am an “attachment parent” who is also a working parent. When I first stumbled upon Elisabeth Badinter’s book, I found myself saying first “She’s attacking everything I hold dear!”, followed by “tell me more”. I have seen the ways in which attachment parenting helps me understand what my child needs and why it is important. I have also see the philoosphy (and the checklist followers) use it to tell me that my needs ceased to matter at all once a child left my body, that I am no longer worthy of any consideration. I have seen the philosophy struggle with the transition from when our children’s wants are their needs, and when their wants start to transition to what they are for all of us: wants that sometimes conflict with someone else’s best interests. Attachment parenting can be a loving philosophy that starts treats children as autonomous beings who deserve as much consideration as we all do. I’ve also seen it be used as a flagellating philosophy that reminds mothers, along with most other voices in our culture, that their needs no longer matter.
I’ve blogged about this at my own blog as well:
http://motheringourselves.com/blog/?p=124
http://motheringourselves.com/blog/?p=394
I’ve just discovered your blog via Jessica Valenti, and I love it. I will share it with my followers, they need to hear about you 🙂
Thank you for the lovely comment. I have come across your terrific blog before and I must read it more now that you’ve introduced yourself.
[…] Auf der einen Seite war ich zuerst recht angetan vom Attachment-Gedanken, bei dem es wohl darum gehen soll, sein Kind möglichst liebevoll und mit viel Nähe zu erziehen. Andererseits kräuseln sich mir bei manchen Aussagen auf Attachment-Parenting.de die Zehennägel, weil so ein Absolutheitsanspruch gestellt wird und ein besonders großer Druck auf Mütter aufgebaut wird. Da wird von “tötlicher Flaschenmilch” gesprochen, außerdem hätte die Mutter doch bis zum 3. Geburtstag ununterbrochen beim Kind zu bleiben, selbst eine “Fremdbetreuung” durch den Vater oder die wohlvertrauten Großeltern sei nicht zulässig und schade dem Kind für’s ganze Leben. Frauen werden völlig auf ihre angeblich natürlichen Aufgaben und Körperfunktionen reduziert. Und wie kommt man überhaupt dazu, Eltern, die diese Dinge anders handhaben, als weniger “attached”, ihren Kindern weniger verbunden, zu bezeichnen? Das ist nicht nur beleidigend, sondern geht außerdem völlig an der Realität vorbei.Blue milk hat dazu auch einen Blogpost geschrieben. […]
Setting up a profile, uploading photos and videos, updating information, and responding to customers
may seem basic to the internet savvy people, but to others
it can be a daunting task. Today there are hundreds of social media websites like Facebook, You – Tube, Twitter
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If you neglect your followers they will neglect you.
[…] heavily informed from the Attachment Parenting that I’ve learned about from blue milk (e.g. this post). What I’ve taken from the discussions is that it’s like so many issues: people should […]
[…] it cause?, Feminism and attachment parenting and why they’ve more in common than in conflict, Why attachment parenting needs feminism, Can attachment parenting be saved?, and The accidental attachment […]
[…] I am not the only one who agrees that attachment parenting could use a healthy dose of feminism. Another aspect that kind of grinds my gears is the marginalization of mothers who work. I have […]
[…] with parenting.Luckily I am not the only one who agrees that attachment parenting could use a healthy dose of feminism. Another aspect that kind of grinds my gears is the marginalization of mothers who work. I have […]
[…] From Why attachment parenting NEEDS feminism. […]
Sadly, you have no idea of what it means to be a mother. Feminism has robbed us of that joy.
[…] Why attachment parenting NEEDS feminism […]
Wow that comment of Wootan’s about there being no substitute for a toddler for “mother” is blatantly untrue. I am one of many mothers I know of who can report at least one of their young children preferring their father to their mother for comfort at various times. And what about twins or siblings of greater multiples? They have to get used to sharing carers from birth and they do manage even as babies although, in my experience, there can be a lot of protest. Sounds like a very convenient idea for the father of lots of children to peddle – until they are walking, speaking, toilet trained etc I need not be bothered with them because they need “mother” only. If he had supported the mother of his children properly he would have found at least some if his children (particularly the younger ones) would have been happy to go to him for comfort. A trusted caregiver more quickly available than the mother/primary caregiver will in many cases be more acceptable to the young child, and even baby, needing comfort. Also it’s hard to believe that to be comforted by a trusted caregiver while a baby or toddler waits for their mother can be a terribly damaging experience. Absolutist “philosophies” like Wootan’s are so damaging to anxious mothers!
Indeed.