The cover of TIME magazine (5/21/12) with the beautiful 20something mom breastfeeding her 3 year old son had me shaking my head.
What WAS she thinking taking that picture, and having her full name on the magazine cover? Ten years from now her son is going to have to face his friends when they ask him what it was like to suck his mother’s breasts. Because they have proof. A million covers of TIME magazine, internet pages and downloads later. Really. The social insensitivity of that photo takes my breath away.
As for the topic, the so-called Attachment Parenting style advocated by Dr. Bill Sears, well. That, too, has it’s serious problems. Let me be brief:
Attachment Theory describes the emotional or relational attachment between a developing infant and mother. It was first studied in depth by John Bowlby (and later by Ainsworth, Main, Cassidy, Hazan, Shaver, and others) in the 1950’s. It posits that the emotional attachment between mother and child is the main determinant for that child’s internal sense of self-in-relationship throughout life. The mother, if she is relatively consistent in her caregiving, responsiveness, and mirroring of the child’s emotions, creates a “safe haven” for a developing self against the world. That same mother, as her child begins to reach out to the world beyond her, creates a “secure base” from which a child explores the world and can return to mom safely and with support for a developing independence.
This science has been studied for the last 50 years, and has developed a deep collection of research, data, and process that I subscribe to as a relational psychotherapist. About 55% of us are fortunate enough to have mothers that welcomed us to the world, sheltered, fed, changed, disciplined, loved, laughed, cried and protected us well enough that we emerged from our infancy able to approach others for support, and not worry too much about relationships. This is called having a “secure attachment” style. The rest of us, because of our mother’s own anxieties, environmental stress, illness, or other issues develop an anxious, withdrawing, or mixed attachment style that we carry from childhood through adulthood at about a 75% rate.
Now, here’s my issue: There is nothing in the research of Attachment Theory to indicate that mothers must breastfeed their infants and toddlers, co-sleep with them, or never put them down in order to create secure emotional attachment. Nothing. What the research indicates is that mothers who do their level best to hold, look at, speak to, and provide consistent emotional responsiveness to their child’s distress, and support to their developing independence despite issues like also being a spouse, or working, or using daycare, or tending to other children in the family, or having friends or hobbies, usually produce relationally secure children. Period.
So if you love your children, are relatively secure yourself, have the most stable marriage or partnership you can create, have good health, and manage the details of your life pretty well, you don’t have to give up your body, mind and self out of the fear that your child isn’t getting what they need. Pending unseen catastrophes, they will, they can, and they do.
Most of all, I’m sad that mothering can feel so overwhelming to some of us that following the direction of one single doctor seems safer than following one’s own common sense and the collective wisdom of the millions of mothers and fathers who have gone before us. Attachment parenting? Dump the pseudo-science and let your child sleep in their own bed. It’s safer for them, and you may actually get a (mostly) full night’s rest even when you’re up at 3am to nurse, change or rock them back to sleep. Honest.