Where Attachment Parents Lose Ground
Guilt. Augh, the guilt.
Many of us practice some form of natural parenting. Many of us choose breastmilk, cosleeping, babywearing, and whole foods for our babies and families.
But lately, I’ve noticed that something is lacking with a few vocal members of the attachment parenting community. Empathy. Yep, that’s putting yourself in another’s shoes.
You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to sanction. But it’d be nice if some APs would understand that it’s not as easy as popping a baby on a breast or in your bed. Life is not the same for everyone out there. Our experiences are different. Our reactions are different.
And until the Attachment Parenting community isolates the elitists, it will be hard to gain ground.
- » See also: Fleurville Bags: Eco-friendly, Family-friendly…and Sexy?!
- » Get Eco Child’s Play by RSS or sign up by email.
I babywear my son. He is over 15 months old and is still breastfeeding. He sleeps in a bed in our room and cosleeps with us if he needs to breastfeed in the night. I made his baby food and now he eats all the healthy homemade, homegrown food he can. We cloth diaper and line dry. I’m a convert.
But not because anyone forced me or guilted me into being a natural parent.
With my older son, I was a single mother. I went back to work at 6 weeks and pumped breastmilk for and during my night shifts at a nearby resort hotel. But my hours became longer and more frequent and demanding and eventually I had no time or too much stress to actually get any milk. My son was supplemented with organic formula while I worked those evenings after any breastmilk ran out. He breastfed for 10 months, though I used the Super Baby Food system religiously from the time he started eating solids.
Still, most of my friends considered me “crunchy”. Maybe it was my habit of recycling, though there was no curbside collection. Maybe it was because even 4 years ago, I asked for natural wooden toys only for the critter. Maybe because I coslept with my son before I even knew the term. Maybe it was that I minimally vaccinated and didn’t circumcise. Whatever the reason, I was still outside the mainstream.
And maybe that’s why I don’t have rose-colored glasses with every post I see about breastfeeding or sleep techniques. Because some writers simply do it poorly. Instead of touting the benefits of said natural parenting practice, they guilt their readers about choosing a different path.
Most recently, I saw this in a post that said that “forcing your baby to sleep alone” was akin to “forced sex”. (After numerous commenters protested, she changed the post to read that the “Cry It Out” method was disrespectful just as forced sex was disrespectful and removed the term “rape”.) I don’t even agree with CIO, but was turned off by the flippant use of rape imagery.
Hasn’t anyone ever heard the old adage about “catching flies with honey”? No, we don’t have to prance around the issues with Disney animals playing troubadour to our cause. But we don’t have to be so critical, either.
It’s elitist to advocate that all women breastfeed or to criticize all formula use without simultaneously fighting for family-friendly work environments. It is great to educate about elimination communication (EC) as long as you understand that many families don’t have the luxury of that time spent with their tot.
Just be open to understanding the “other side”.
Some people have said, “Well, if you don’t agree, go somewhere else and find like-minded people.” But why? Where does that lack of dialogue get us? It gets us preaching to the choir. No one is changing their behavior. There are still babies who never experience the joy of being worn. They planet continues to fill with disposable diapers. Women may hear Hanna Rosin and think hers is a pretty good reason to give up trying when it comes to breastfeeding.
And why? Because we’ve surrounded ourselves with “Yes!” Men.
Let’s do better.
I write about natural parenting. I follow children’s health studies and often use them to illustrate a point I agree with. When I found the study that showed that many researchers refuse to name formula as a culprit in a higher rate of illnesses, I blogged on it (partly because I loved their use of “Voldemort“). When I found a study that showed that “Home Birth Is-*Gasp!*-Safe!” I made sure people heard that. I don’t believe in fast food, and was intrigued when I read a study that suggested that the more often kids eat the junk, the lower they score on standardized tests. I both write human interest stories, and I post about breastfeeding laws, cloth diapers, and natural birthing.
I am opinionated about all of these things. But I try to tout the benefits of these granola-y lifestyle choices instead of vilify the “other side”. I’m not perfect. But I try. Mostly, I try by sharing my personal experiences in the hopes that others will understand what helped me get where I am today. (A place that still has a long way to go!)
I didn’t come to the natural parenting community through browbeating. I sincerely doubt we’ll win any converts like that.
So maybe we could all try to take one empathetic step forward, away from the guilt trips and into the education and excitement about our babywearing, cosleeping, cloth-diapering, food-growing lives.
Image: Smabs Sputzer of Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
Dig this? Follow me on Twitter.
Great post! Very refreshing to hear sensible comments rather than the “my way or no way” arguments often bandied about. It is worth remembering that some aspects of attachment parenting can be put to use, even if some others can not. We have never co-slept, and unfortunately I didn’t manage breastfeeding for very long, but as far as possible my boys have home made food, and I still wear my 2.5 year old. We both love it and it works for us!
I agree with the sentiment of your post.
I’m going to nitpick though, starting with “They planet continues to fill with disposable diapers.” YES, the planet DOES continue to fill with ’sposies. And just like every other form of garbage, should be reduced.
But disposable diapers aren’t “AP”, and don’t really belong in this post.
Because in doing so, seems like you are participating in the isolationism of AP that you’re talking about! By linking things like cloth diapering to AP, another step of ground is lost in the strive for more AP-raised kids.
Because when not-yet AP parents believe that attachment parenting comes with a whole bunch of other stuff (albeit much good stuff), like homemade baby food (not necessarily AP), cloth diapers (not necessarily AP), most expensive carseats/infant carriers (not necessarily AP), homeschooling (not necessarily AP), and not working out of the home (not necessarily AP)it becomes something less attainable to the general public. Those things might be natural living, and might mesh well with AP, but they aren’t AP, and shouldn’t be “sold” as such. It limits AP exposure & reachability. If you want to sell AP, it needs to be attainable for EVERYONE (which it is).
AP is about honoring your baby. About believing in your babies cries as real form of communication. About babywearing (which can be done in a SNUGLI too!!), breastfeeding (or on-cue bottle feeding with love), bedsharing (which can be roomsharing or responsive nighttime parenting as well).
When we stick to the core facts of AP is when we’ll really start to gain ground.
I agree completely! What works for some babies/families doesn’t work for all…
Every baby is made different. Mine was breastfed till 20 months old because of many reasons. It was cheaper, I preferred the bond, he actually threw up or wouldn’t take formula.
I also couldn’t feed him many solids. I tried organic, I tried making my own baby food, mainly because he couldn’t eat anything that had carrots in it (which he threw up and had allergic reactions to).
And if you ever read the sides of baby food, almost ALL contain carrots!
I contemplated cloth diapers because he got rashes from certain diapers (and these weren’t normal rashes, these were chemically induced from something in the diaper)..
I still to this day co-sleep for at least a few hours before bed, or in the morning. I’ve been co-sleepin/feeding my son since he was born.
It started because I had to work, and if I was to get any sleep, it revolved around not having to get up every 30-40 minutes to feed my guy (since he was a cluster feeder).
On top of it all…I didn’t want to risk dropping him from being so sleepy while trying to rock and feed him and stay awake.
He also slept longer while with me.
And some families don’t have the luxury of allowing a baby to “scream it out” in the middle of the morning because there are other family members that are trying to sleep and need their sleep.
So when it comes to “text book” parenting…there is no ONE correct way!
To each their own. If the world were so black and white, then every child would be well behaved and every parent wouldn’t swing by mc donalds every week to feed their child.
Just as we as adults reflect on how we were raised vs. our friends..no 2 had the same parenting.
It’s nice to get advice and from there, see what works best for you, your little one, and your family.
Otherwise, if we want the world telling us what is right and wrong for our babies, then we might as well hand over our babies to the government and let them do all of the parenting.
We’ve already seen where it’s taken the kids..
Kid’s killing parents, horrible portrayed video games, too much violent and provocative television shows, kid’s with unlimited cell phone use and no monitoring…
Only we as the parents know what our children need!
I always remember the episode of South Park where the town becomes so full of itself everyone begins to smell their own farts appreciatively. I think the problem is deeper than just being nice… although that is the answer to most things.
People who have gained the uphill ground on babywearing, attachment parenting, breastfeeding, and others all did so at considerable cost and in many cases were alone and ridiculed for their choices. This makes people isolated and defensive. Once you have a core group of people who are where they are because they fought tooth an nail to be there it is hard to react with compassion to others when the core idea becomes more mainstream. Sometimes the “real” message gets diluted or changed and the people who were there from the beginning feel cheated and still isolated and ridiculed.
The answer is easy… be nice… (and i believe that IS the answer) but the road to get there crosses religion, politics, marketing, social taboo and psychological areas as well. It is hard not to sound like an activist when talking about these things because we are all told this “natural” form of whatever is not as “effective” as what we can make or there is no difference between formula and breastmilk. Companies pay MILLIONS of dollars to make sure you do not know HOW MUCH better breastmilk is. I say this to illustrate that our actions between each other are not the only issue here.
But being nice is a start.
It is funny how the term AP has become synonomous with all-things-natural. It really is an undeniable connection though. You rarely ever find an AP’er who won’t breastfeed, won’t promote natural birth, won’t make babyfood, and won’t consider cloth diapers. It’s really a rarity.
This is where I find myself in trouble (well, me and all the people who give me cyber high-fives because of my MODERATE parenting): I feel like because we circumcised, and choose to vaccinate, and have done GENTLE, LOVING sleep training, that somehow I don’t get to be in the AP club. And that’s exactly how it turns out. I tell that original blogger that I don’t like her self-righteous “sleep training is like rape” analogy, and she tells me to stop reading her site.
So they DO go hand in hand, whether we all like it or not. You’re not allowed to be AP unless you’re doing everything some super hardcore AP types are doing, which includes every single aspect of natural parenting. There is no middle ground anymore.
Sometimes people take things way too far before the rubber band snaps back and smacks them in the face.
Fruitcake! Serious fruitcake!
Glad my kids are too old to have any possibility of being around yours! Sorry for your neighbors!
Great line of thinking. We should all stretch a little toward more empathy. Diversity of all kinds, including opinions, is what makes the world a richer place! Thanks for sharing.
This is the biggest issue I have with AP as well. Many (though certainly not all) moms of my acquaintance who practice AP have this self-righteous “crunchier-than-thou” attitude that rivals the worst ultrafundamentalist religious zealot “holier-than-thou” attitude.
I do a lot of the AP things for a lot of the same reasons. But I’m not a failure as a mom just because I choose to stop co-sleeping when my babies learn to crawl (using gasp! CIO), or wean at a year, or sometimes prefer the infant carrier and/or stroller to wearing my baby, or what have you.
Get over yourselves, ladies!
I agree about being nice and that goes for the other side of the fence as well. It takes 2 to tango. From what I can tell this whole conversation started with the sleep training/rape comparison. The people who were offended could have risen to a higher level. We could all use a lesson in forgiveness and understanding while at the same time having honest and growth oriented communication. I think that’s what most of us would want for our children regardless of how they are parented. We must remember that children are learning mostly by watching us. I think this is the most important aspect of parenting.
Actually, I wrote a post similar to this regarding the whole green movement last week. (http://blog.thenatureschild.com/2009/06/how-green-movement-fails-and-baby-steps.html)
I think the same applies to both cases (to most causes where people are passionate, actually). And I wrote it before the whole rape/CIO drama…which became much more dramatic than you probably saw. Yeesh.
Regarding that case, I still don’t think that I or any other rape survivor should apologize or “gotten over it” (as some suggested) because that was *my* reaction as someone who has dealt with the horrors of the crime. I simply don’t think that people should be flippant about rape any more than they should pedophilia. Neither are a good analogy for much. Others are entitled to their own reactions to the use of rape imagery. But as I articulated above, it’s a pretty ugly way to convey a message.
So no, this blog didn’t start with that post. My life experience as a parent the past 4 years were the same either way, as were my baby steps to being more natural all the time.
But my feelings about this matter were certainly exacerbated by that blog.