Categories: Parenting

When Attachment Parenting Isn’t Right: Rebutting Dr. Sears

The recent vogue of attachment parenting was begun largely by Dr. Sears- a pediatrician and author of more than 30 children’s books. The basic principals are that the baby should always be worn by you- usually in a sling, the baby should sleep with you, pretty much in perpetuity, breastfeeding into toddlerhood, and avoiding frequent separation from the child, among others. Depending on how hard-core the attachment parent is, this may include homebirthing, homeschooling, breastfeeding a child until she is school age, and letting every facet of the parent’s (read: mother’s) life be about the baby.

Sound great? I used to think so. It is easy get hooked on attachment parenting as a new mother, simply because you are told that attachment parenting is the only way to be a good parent. The attachment way, its proponents will tell you, is the only way a truly loving parent would go. So what does attachment parenting look like practically?

Attachment parenting involves baby wearing- a front sling is worn with a newborn, baby, or toddler in it, and the parent (well, mother) is going to wear this most of the day, whenever she is not holding the baby. In a freak coincidence, Dr. Sears markets and sells his own baby sling. The baby sling may work for someone women- I have known women (well, just one) who loved it and found it easy and workable. But after at least two baby slings were recalled due to defects that made babies fall out of them, I opted for the next best thing- a baby carrier. It looked much like a sling, but felt to me to be a little more secure. It was hot, uncomfortable and gave me back aches that would linger for days.

The main principle behind baby wearing is that babies should be touched virtually all of the time, and also that many pre-industrial societies around the world use them. This last fact, mentioned in depth in most AP books, including Dr. Sears’, for some reason made sense to me. Those people must be closer to their babies- they don’t have all of the things that get in the way of parenting- so that must be the correct route. I now believe that these women wear baby slings because 1. they don’t have strollers- if they did, they would use them, and 2. they have to carry goods to market and/or work in the fields most days and can not carry the baby themselves and do not have the aforementioned strollers. So does this make someone who hates the sling a bad parent? According to many AP proponents, yes it does.

Many AP parenting books suggest doing whatever the baby or young child wants, plain and simple. If you don’t so this, you are a bad parent. You child doesn’t want shots? So don’t give them shots- yes, there are many AP parents who do that as well. What if you’ve had an emergency C-section and can not hold you baby right away? Well, that’s your own fault. The baby is three days old and you are already a bad parent. Dr. Sears has been quoted as saying “After surgery a mother’s energy is diverted into healing her wounds rather than mothering her baby.” Take that. What if you have an incredible difficulty breastfeeding, or you can not find a way to fit it into your life? Yep- bad parent.

If you say anything about the parenting style not working for you, you may be told that you must not love your child as much as they do. Why would anyone tell a mother this, and why do women allow themselves to be convinced that this is right for them? Because women are too quick to be told how to parent. I believe they do not trust their own instincts enough, and society simply does not much value them. Mothers who go the AP route are expected to give up pretty much anything in their lives that does not involve the baby. That includes friends (avoid separations), talking on the phone (don’t do it if the baby doesn’t like it- no kid does), eating a meal by herself (if the child wants it, he must be hungry- give it to him), or even her marriage (Dr. Sears says that if you want intimacy, leave your bed- the baby should get your bed and you should have to leave it). If you have seen the way that it works in a practical sense, it can really get absurd at times.

The guiding principle of AP is that you do what the child wants and needs. This includes naps, meals, play time, discipline, etc. This means practically no discipline (what child wants that?). This also means disrupting all of your family’s activities so that the child’s reign supreme. In many cases, yes, I believe that is important, but after seeing AP parents miss important events- including funerals- because their child’s schedule could not be interrupted, I am convinced that this is in many cases both impractical and can even be detrimental. Children have to learn at some point that the world does not revolve around them. No- I am not saying that mothers should do everything they want at the detriment of their child’s needs, only that in many cases, it is not possible to do. What if you are pregnant and can not wear a baby sling at all? What if you are trying to raise two or more children via AP simultaneously? In my experience, neither of these is possible, and it isn’t fair or ethical to tell a mother that if she can’t make it work, she is a bad parent.

Many attachment parenting practitioners will often say that mothers who do not practice it either do not love their child enough, or are just too selfish. But from what I have seen personally, it is often the child who suffers for this- unable to control their impulses, unwilling to take other people’s needs into account, and unable to learn self control. After a child is past the infant and early toddler stage, AP in partical terms is largely about making the child like you. But motherhood is not about being liked. Often, it is specifically about being disliked, and having the confidence and fortitude to handle that and continue to be consistent.

The big promise that I believed from Dr. Sears’ books was that shyness in children comes from not being “properly attached” to their parents, and that AP will not cause clinginess- it will actually give them the self confidence to be independent. I am sure that there are children who do respond this way, just I am sure that there are families where AP works well and is effective. But in my experience, AP caused extreme clinginess to the point that there was no self-confidence in any task at which I was not involved. This has gotten so severe that I have simply had to end the practice. Does that make me a bad parent? Not remotely. And I will not allow others to tell me that it does, or that I do not love my children as much as they do. And neither should anyone else.

Women should have the self-confidence and backbone to realize that they can be good and effective mothers without doing things that go against their instincts and good sense. I do believe that this is a women’s issue, with women attacking each other for their parenting style or even for not having the same type of baby gear that they do. It is an issue of competition as much as it is of parenting. I have never seen a father with a baby sling, and I have never seen a father chastise anyone for not wearing one or for going out for pancakes without their baby. If we all try to discover why that is, perhaps a better dialogue can be established as to exactly why the endless mommy competition exists in the first place.