Attachment Parenting: Live an attached life
Many women are bombarded with suggestions and advice from family, friends, and even complete strangers once they have a baby. Some of the most common things a new mom hears is that she will spoil her baby by holding him or her or that she shouldn’t breastfeed for too long. While this advice is meant to be helpful, it is actually wrong. Let’s explore some of the most common suggestions new moms hear.
“Don’t hold the baby so much, you will spoil him.” This is completely wrong. You cannot spoil a baby. On the contrary, a new baby depends on close physical touch from his mother for survival. Babies need to be held and rocked, so they feel secure and comfortable.
“Don’t breastfeed past six months (nine months, one year, etc.)” Breast milk is the perfect nutrition for a new baby. Babies depend on their mother’s milk for the first six months. After this point, a baby does start solid foods, but they still need breast milk. Breastfeeding is more than just nutrition to a baby (although the nutrients in breast milk are incredibly beneficial), it is also about comfort. Nature has designed women to breastfeed their babies, and it should continue for as long as the child wants, which could be until four to seven years of age.
“Let him cry it out in his bed at night, he needs to learn to sleep on his own.” Letting an infant cry for prolonged periods of time is simply wrong. A baby needs to feel reassured and comforted, not abandoned and alone. Parenting is more than just a day job; you need to be there for your child at night, as well.
So, what about the woman who ignores these “suggestions” and continues to respond to her baby’s cues. She focuses on her baby’s needs and immediately offers reassurance by calming her baby. She wears her baby in a carrier and breastfeeds on demand. Is this woman doing this because she lives in a less modern culture? No, this woman is following her instincts and practicing attachment parenting. Women who follow this type of parenting style believe in natural parenting and developing a close bond with their baby.
This kind of parenting style was practiced by the mothers of years past and in today’s modern world, when women share responsibilities and earn for the family, attachment parenting has gradually become a rare species. The result is indeed disastrous – the child misses tender love, motherly affection, respect, and care. The child will become withdrawn and feel abandoned when he does not receive attention from his mother.
Many researchers and child psychologists believe that criminal tendencies in adults can be linked to a disturbed childhood. A baby that is abandoned feels a tremendous amount of pain and neglect. The baby feels as though no one is there for him or her, which causes the baby to grow into a child, and later an adult, who still feels alone and withdrawn. When I mention abandonment, I do not mean it in the literal sense of the word. Abandonment refers to anytime the baby’s needs are not being met, cries are not responded too, not being held, or not being breastfed when the baby needs to eat. Therefore, attachment parenting stands as the need of the hour to promote psychological and physical closeness between the child and the parent.
Perhaps this is why more and more parents are returning to a more traditional way of parenting, which is to promote closeness between the parent and baby.
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