Attachment parenting is the name Dr. Sears has given parenting styles that involve closeness, intuition and listening to the baby’s needs and desires rather than centering baby’s routine around the parents’ needs. Baby-wearing, breastfeeding for as long as possible, and the family bed are all mainstays of attachment parenting. It can be a beautiful thing when it works as advertised, and it can inflict guilt when it doesn’t. Some might argue that the emphasis on closeness and breastfeeding imposes an undue burden on the mother who needs or wants to return to work earlier than six months after the child is born. Dr. Sears assures readers that his tenets of attachment parenting are only an ideal, not something every parent must live up to all the time, though his assertion that you can’t adhere to every principle all the time because “nobody’s perfect” may lead you to suspect that full adherence to attachment parenting is in fact perfection. Dr. Cohen warns that trying to interpret a baby’s every cry can drive a parent nuts. But Dr. Sears might tell you, that if your kids are acting up and you’re going nuts because you don’t know why, something’s awry with your parenting style.
Attachment Parenting International
“What Is Attachment Parenting?”
“Dr. William Sears, a practicing pediatrician in California, coined the term ‘attachment parenting’ over twenty-five years ago. Dr. Sears did not start attachment parenting but simply observed that mothers in other cultures cared for and raised their children in a very natural, loving way as they had done for thousands of years. This type of care helped the parents and baby form a strong, secure attachment.”
…read the full article
Dr. Sears
“What Attachment Parenting Is To The Seven Baby B’s”
“The way baby and parents get started with one another helps the early attachment unfold. The days and weeks after birth are a sensitive period in which mothers and babies are uniquely primed to want to be close to one another. A close attachment after birth and beyond allows the natural, biological attachment-promoting behaviors of the infant and the intuitive, biological, caregiving qualities of the mother to come together.” …read the full article
Parenting Web
“Attachment Parenting: The Components of a Nurturing, Instinctive Parenting Style”
“These are my personal thoughts about Attachment Parenting. You may not use the term Attachment Parenting to describe this way of parenting. You might call it Natural Parenting, Instinctive Parenting, Immersion Parenting or Continuum Parenting. Perhaps a label is unnecessary to you. Maybe you are simply ‘following your instincts’ and have never thought of parenting as anything but second nature. I am fully supportive of all of those possibilities.” …read the full article
Attachment Parenting Australia
“About Attachment Parenting”
“Although an attachment parenting approach is becoming more popular in Western societies, most parents’ approach to parenting in Western societies is less child-centred. Because attachment parenting is not as frequently practised as other approaches, some aspects of attachment parenting are not well understood and can be challenging for some people.” …read the full article
Dr. Cohen
Excerpt from The New Basics
“I have always thought that parents are attached to their babies. Apparently not everyone shares that point of view. Dr. William Sears introduces a concept he calls ‘attachment parenting,’ wherein he teaches new parents how to develop a connection with their new baby. I have encountered many parents who followed this philosophy and literally drove themselves and their baby crazy with guilt and frustration when it didn’t work.” …read the full article
