32 Facts About Attachment parenting

Attachment parenting is a parenting philosophy that proposes methods aiming to promote the attachment of parent and infant not only by maximal parental empathy and responsiveness but by continuous bodily closeness and touch.

The term attachment parenting was coined by the American pediatrician William Sears.

Attachment parenting is just one of many responsiveness and love-oriented parenting philosophies that entered the pedagogical mainstream after World War II, and it owes many of its ideas to older teachings, such as Benjamin Spock's influential handbook Baby and Child Care .

Attachment parenting's argued that infants, speaking in terms of evolution, have not arrived in the modernity yet, so that today's way of child care – with bottle feeding, use of cribs and baby carriages, etc.

In 1984, developmental psychologist Aletha Solter published her book The Aware Baby about a parenting philosophy that advocates attachment, extended breastfeeding, and abstinence from punishment, similarly to what William Sears later wrote; however, the point that Solter stressed most was an encouragement of the child's emotional expression to heal stress and trauma.

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Attachment parenting contributed new research about the capacity of newborn infants to express themselves and their emotions, sensitized parents for these signals, and encouraged them – just like Spock – to follow their own judgment.

The first attachment parenting organization, Attachment Parenting International, formed in 1994 in Alpharetta, Georgia, and was founded by Lysa Parker and Barbara Nicholson.

Attachment parenting refers to this birth bonding as "imprinting" and bases himself on a study by Drs.

Attachment parenting argues that this practice makes the child happy and allows the mother to involve the child into everything she does and never to lose sight of the child.

Attachment parenting approves on the use of a sling up to the age of three, since child wearing can be used to calm a misbehaving toddler down.

Attachment parenting thinks of co-sleeping as the ideal arrangement and refers to it as the nighttime equivalent of babywearing: co-sleeping supports, in his opinion, the mother-child-attachment, makes breastfeeding more convenient, and prevents not only separation anxiety, but SIDS, too.

Attachment parenting is convinced that due to the extra nighttime feedings, a child that sleeps close to the mother thrives better than a child "crying, alone, behind bars".

Parents and particularly for mothers, attachment parenting is more strenuous and demanding than most other present-day ways of parenting, placing high responsibility on them without allowing for a support network of helpful friends or family.

Attachment parenting suggests a whole package of measures that aim to prevent an emotional burnout of the mother, like the prioritization and delegation of duties and responsibilities, streamlining of daily routines, and collaboration between both parents.

Since attachment parenting poses a considerable challenge to the reconcilability of motherhood and female career, the philosophy has been greatly criticized, most notably in the context of the attachment parenting controversy from 2012.

Attachment parenting is convinced that children who trust their parents are cooperative and don't resist parental guidance.

Our ideas about attachment parenting are based on thirty-plus years of parenting our own eight children and observing moms and dads whose parenting choices seemed to make sense and whose children we liked.

Williams Sears, attachment parenting is a kind of parenting that is radically characterized by maternal responsivity.

Attachment parenting supporters have distanced themselves from attachment therapy, notably from its methods, but not from its diagnostic criteria.

Need is therefore another basic term; attachment parenting means quintessentially to attend to the child's needs.

Opponents of attachment parenting have questioned that the behavior of a 3½ year old who still demands to nurse can actually be classified as a need.

Developmental psychologist Heidi Keller who comparatively researched the mother-child relationship in a large bandwidth of cultures, disputes that attachment parenting can be described as a return to a "natural motherliness", like many supporters advertise it.

Many of the methods that the representatives of attachment parenting attribute to the evolutionary history of life don't actually play the major role in non-western cultures that is attributed to them.

Attachment parenting is particularly popular among educated urban women in Western countries, who are interested in ecological and social issues.

Many North American Women are organized in support groups of Attachment Parenting International, the movement's umbrella organization, in which Martha Sears serves as a board member.

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In Canada, there are further AP organizations such as the Attachment Parenting Canada Association ; even some public health organizations promote attachment parenting.

In Europe, Attachment Parenting Europe campaigns for attachment parenting; in the Dutch language the philosophy is referred to as natuurlijk ouderschap .

Hamburg, the movement's central point in Germany, hosted a first Attachment Parenting Congress in 2014, under the patronage of Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Manuela Schwesig.

Attachment parenting's characterizes attachment parenting as not just a parenting style, but "a completely fulfilling way of life".

Attachment parenting's stated that the effort to model exceptional children under sacrifice of the parent's own well-being transformed motherhood into a "highly competitive race"; all attempts of women to radically monopolize their parental responsibilities very much accommodate right-wing politics.

Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Judith Warner, too, described how attachment parenting has taken a strong influence on mainstream parenting and how it has established a "culture of total motherhood"; due to these cultural changes, mothers are convinced today that they have to instantly attend to every need of their children in order to protect them from the risk of lifelong abandonment issues.

Breastfeeding includes nutritional benefits which are undeniable, but the main reason breastfeeding is promoted in attachment parenting is for the mother-child bonding through skin to skin contact and intimacy; however, the benefits of skin to skin contact and intimacy are still present for fathers.