Episode 3: Attachment Parenting

I did a deep dive into attachment parenting. I did my best to put aside my own ideas about attachment theory and approach it as a researcher.  I break down what the research does and doesn't show and the spiritual benefits one can gain from this parenting practice.  

Show Notes
New York Times Series: Room for Debate

The Benefits of Attachment Parenting for Infants and Children. A Behavioral Development View 

 Feminism and Attachment Parenting: Attitudes, Stereotypes,

and Misperceptions

The music you here at the start of this and every episode was created by the "Wonderful" Obediya Jones-Darrell. You can check out his work here.

Transcript

0:33

Welcome to this episode of evidence based scrunch attachment parenting. I will start this episode by saying I did not practice attachment parenting. I don't practice attachment parenting. So I am coming to this topic as a researcher and an observer, but not someone who has the lived experience. I'm also going to say that I've done my best to let go of my own previous opinions and biases that I've observed, from things that I've observed, when learning about attachment parenting in the past. So I let go of these biases and opinions while doing this research. and I actually had some really interesting discoveries when I was learning about attachment parenting. I really can't wait to share them with you. I will preface this with saying if you haven't listened to the episode on attachment theory yet, and you don't know attachment theory very well. I would recommend you go back and listen to that first because that fits a bit into attachment parent. If you haven't heard of attachment parenting before. definition of attachment parenting that came from the website asked Dr. Sears, Dr. Sears is the creator of attachment. Parenting goes as this attachment parenting is based on the idea that babies learn to trust and thrive when their needs are consistently met by a caregiver early in life. Attachment parenting is a style of caring for your infant. That brings out the best in the baby and the best in the parents attachment parenting implies first opening your mind and your heart to the individual needs of your baby. And eventually you will develop the wisdom on how to make on the spot decisions on what works best for both you and your baby. So that's your basic description. Of attachment parenting, essentially attachment parenting is a child-led style of parenting children's needs are met on their schedules, not their parents. So I will go ahead and say that Dr. Sears, the creator of this is definitely a controversial figure. He's controversial, probably most for his views on vaccines and vaccine scheduling and vaccine hesitancy. But for the moment, we're just talking about attachment parenting. According to the proponents of attachment parenting, children who had never experienced a secure attachment early in life, don't form healthy attachments later in life. So that's where they're starting to bring in how they perceive ideas about attachment. So there are eight main tenants of attachment parenting. This comes from multiple websites and books. Tenant number one is to prepare for pregnancy birth and parenting. Proponents of attachment parenting, believe that you need to eliminate negative thoughts and feelings about pregnancy and the birth, because that will be what reads you for the emotionally demanding work of being a parent. as a doula, this was very triggering to me, cuz I think it's totally normal to have complicated thoughts about pregnancy, but like I said, I'm coming at it this as an, as unbiased as possible. So we'll just say their view is that it's important to eliminate negative thoughts about birth and pregnancy. Number two is feed with love and respect. So the proponents say breastfeeding is the ideal way to create a secure attachment with your baby. That breastfeeding teaches infants, that parents will always listen to their cues and fulfill their needs. I will say one of the big critiques of attachment parenting, that you'll hear about is we go forward is the militant. So they can often be very shaming about any sort of bottle feeding. Number three is respond with sensitivity with attachment parenting. Parents consider all expressions of emotions, including repeated tantrums as real efforts at communication. So those efforts are to be taken seriously and understood. There shouldn't be any punishment involved. Tenant number four is using a, a nurturing touch. So attachment parenting proponents advise maximum skin to skin touching. That includes joint baths and baby wearing to the ultimate extreme possible. So carrying babies during the day in a front facing sling, and that fits in with number five, which is engage in nighttime parent. Attachment parenting experts advise making co-sleeping arrangements. So the infant sleeps in the same room with parents often in the same bed as the parents. Please be aware that currently the American academy of pediatrics advises against bed sharing, but this is the recommendation of attachment parenting. Number six is to provide constant loving. so proponents of attachment parenting advise nearly constant presence of the main caretaker. So that includes during walks nights out and work. They advocate against outside childcare for more than 20 hours a week for babies younger than 30 months, two and a half. Number seven is practice positive discipline. Parents are advised to distract, redirect, and guide even the youngest of babies to model positive behavior. attachment parenting aims to understand what a child's negative behavior is communicating and to work with the child for a solution rather than imposing their own will. And number eight would be strive for a balance in personnel and family life. So parents are encouraged to create a support network, live a healthy lifestyle and prevent parental burnout. And I couldn't really get more in depth information of how exactly one does that. But that's the advice. So doing this research for me was very interesting. Like I said, I really tried to shut off all my previous conceptions of attachment parenting. And I realized that I personally have practiced a lot more attachment parenting than I realized. So probably one of the only things I've never really regularly practiced. Well outside of both, my children's first six months is night parenting. They both S. in our room for the first six months. We're gonna talk, I say this, I think every episode we're going to talk about sleep at another time, but I think that maybe some of my views of attachment parenting were maybe shaped by what I'd seen in some sleep discussions, Let's talk a little bit about the research around. Attachment parenting. So there's actually not that much empirical research about around attachment parenting, even though I always see it stated as evidence based, I could only find one academic paper that specifically looked at attachment parenting that reviewed existing literature. That was by two authors out of Harvard university. Patrice Marie Miller and Michael Lampor commons. And I will link that in the show notes. It's from 2010. It was a really great summary of the existing research on various tenants of attachment parenting, including breastfeeding on toed. Co-sleeping. And it noted the very positive benefits of each of these individual practices. So I won't specifically get into the benefits of each specific practice here, but it did note that there were very many benefits and the authors noted that there isn't very much research that looks at attachment parenting and attachment theory and where those two fit together. So they cite some studies that looked at high rates of healthy attachment in cultures where families sleep together and where infants are held very often throughout the day. So what I found lacking in this article and any other bits of research that I tried to find. and this sort of fits back to my own realization of how much aspects of attachment parenting I've practiced was that there's really no research on what makes the magic recipe of attachment parenting. Those eight tenants that I noted different than the sum of each of its ingredients. So to use myself as an example, I love baby wearing with my oldest child. He never wanted to be put down. So I think I probably used the stroller six times in the first six months of life. He was worn everywhere for definitely most of his first year and even on through his second year. And, you know, until he was about two and a. and I, we really got along very well with baby, with baby wearing a little less with my daughter because she was a less sticky baby. She was okay. Being in the stroller. And because I was often running after a five year old, it was easier to have her in the stroller, but I still do baby wear whatever I can because I, I really love it. And. In terms of breastfeeding. I breastfed on demand for my son for over two and a half years. I'm still breastfeeding my daughter, we just hit our one year anniversary. so I I'm very positive about breastfeeding. I have a breastfeeding tattoo to commemorate, the breastfeeding I did with my son. So I'm a big believer in that. All that said, I definitely fit those two tenants. in terms of the childcare. Both my children are in childcare. Part-time probably more than 20 hours a week, but maybe not that much more, but I can say we definitely did not practice, uh, room sharing or bed sharing. After the first six months both children were put in their own bedrooms So I think my question around the research is we know the positive benefits of some of these practices. We know the positive benefits of exclusively breastfeeding of baby wearing, I just noted that there are known benefits for breastfeeding, for baby wearing. And we are going to devote episodes to both of those topics. Those are not being treated as givens. We are going to explore exactly what we mean when we talk about the benefits of breastfeeding, when we talk about the benefits of baby wearing to a much greater extent. What makes it magic about doing all of these things? Is there something special? Makes them better together. So the way I was thinking of it is it's like reading research on the health benefits of apples, reading research on the health benefits of butter, and then presenting justification for why you have to eat apple pie. So we have all these different factors, but does something different happen when they're all combined together? Is there a negative when they're not all together? So that's the big question that always comes up for me around really any kind of parenting style that involves a whole lifestyle, that it's not just individual things, another big critique of attachment parenting and like attachment theory and probably like lots of parenting things is that it's inherently anti-feminist. So attachment parenting always uses the. Quote caregiver, the focus on breastfeeding and co-sleeping and constant care typically assumes it's going to fall on the mother serving as the primary caregiver. And if you've spent much time in attachment parenting, social media spaces, you'll certainly find that this is a very common dynamic. I found one interesting study that looked at some feminist perspectives on attachment parent. That was called feminism and attachment parenting attitude, stereotypes, and misconceptions. And I will link that in the show notes as well. So the researchers in this study surveyed four self-defined types of. And these were all people who self-identified as women, I should say, this is the term that they used. and the four types of women were women that defined themselves as feminist mothers, feminist, non mothers, non feminist mothers, and non feminist, non mothers. So of these four groups, they found that women who identified as feminist mother. Were actually more likely to practice and support attachment parenting practices than those mothers who did not identify as feminists. And interestingly, to add to that, the feminist mothers in the study assumed that their beliefs were not typical of most self-identified feminist mothers. So they assumed they like doing these practices, but most feminist mothers. Wouldn't the authors theorized that this was due to optimal distinctiveness theory. That's an individual's simultaneous need to be a part of a group and an individual. There was this idea that the feminist mothers wanted to be part of this attachment parenting group, but also want to be seen as like the feminist within attachment so I think, and I'll talk a little bit more about the idea of groups and the need for groups a little bit later but that sounded that wrong. True to me personally, I could see this idea. I mean, in some ways that's sort of what this podcast is all about that finding a space where there's people who. have some of the same parenting ideas as you, but also being this individual is, is a hard thing to find in the internet and in the world today. So maybe being the feminist in attachment parenting can be sort of, sort of freeing, be a nice feeling. And I was also just having my own thoughts based on my own experiences. I haven't found, like I said, any research that looked at the individuals versus the whole of attach. like the other research, I noted the research on feminism and attachment parenting looked at attachment parenting practices and not as attachment parenting as a whole. So a self-identified feminist mother like myself, maybe interested in parts of attachment parenting. Then non feminist parents, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily practicing all of them. The research didn't look into that specifically. And when I was researching feminism and attachment parenting, I discovered a very interesting New York times opinion debate. They do these things where they bring different experts in to look at different sides of an issue from 2012 that looked at different sides of attachment parenting. So I'm not gonna get into the whole thing now, but I will add the link in the show notes and. It looked at different aspects of feminism and how that either works with, or doesn't work with attachment parenting. It noted some of the inherent privilege that is involved in attachment parenting. The ability to stay up all night with your child for months and years at a time, definitely implies that you might not be having to work at night or get up early in the morning. The ability to have someone. Stays home with your child all day also implies an inherit privilege. I also wanted to think of attachment parenting in relation to some spiritual aspects. So I think that attachment, as I mentioned in our attachment theory episode, Is a key aspect of spirituality. Our ability to feel safe with others is part of what allows us to be spiritual beings. Healthy attachment allows us to have trust in our place in the universe there are certainly spiritual aspects to attachment parenting. I think probably most notably would be that it involves giving your whole self over to the idea of parenting. Attachment parents would say that they live in tuned with their baby's specific wants and needs that they have evolved into a symbiotic relationship with their beings. They're fully one with their instincts in their baby's needs. There could be certainly a spiritual aspect to this endeavor, allowing your own self to be completely one with the schedule and attention of your child or children. And as I've noted about the attachment parenting community attachment parenting comes with its own international community, which offers a sense of spiritual connection. There's this idea of global parenting community. We're gonna talk about that probably on many episodes, because that's one of the big drivers of this podcast. Attachment parenting is, probably even one of the earlier parenting styles to have really clicked into that first with blog posts and discussion words. And now through Facebook and Instagram, this global community. So where does that leave us with attachment parenting? Well, it definitely leaves me with some. Episode ideas. I would love to look a little bit more about what does it actually mean to be a feminist mother? I think that could mean more than one thing. So I think we'll look at that some more. I think we definitely want to look at other parenting communities online. There's an upcoming episode specifically about the virtual village. And as always, I think that when we talk about attachment parenting, it's another great example of the importance. When we talk of research of looking at what is being measured. So there's this idea that attachment parenting is beneficial. There's all this research on the benefits of attachment parenting. But when we actually look at that research, it's really looking at. The specific different tenants of attachment parenting. How do these benefits go together? Is, is it exponential? If they go together, do not get the benefits from any of them, if you don't practice all of them. So I wasn't able to find any answers to any of these questions. I would approach the research around attachment parenting with some weariness, with some caution. I think there is the appeal of being part of a global community and also feeling like this is the special thing that you do. so I think we see in today's world that there's a lack of a local village, so we're reaching for it globally. Being an attachment parent gives you both this individual identity and to be part of a community. So we're definitely going to talk about that a lot more in upcoming episodes. I will leave us there for now. This was a really interesting topic for me because I had to pause some of my own thoughts. I was very eliminating to me to see how much of attachment parenting I did agree with because I kind of, I will say now that the episodes over had some bad tastes in my mouth from some early attachment parenting interactions. so it was, it was interesting to me to see how many of the tenants I really did agree with. And it was interesting to me to see some of the things, especially around feminism, because that sort of changed my view of what I had seen as something that was specifically and inherently and antifeminist maybe could be looked at in a different way. I hope you enjoy today's episode of evidence-based crunch. if there are certain things you would like to hear more about, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at evidence based crunch. If you liked this episode, please review and subscribe.