Why labels have been 'attached' to parenting

Image thanks to 60 Minutes Australia

This really isn’t a topic that I want to get too heavily involved in… but I have an opinion and want to share it!

Last night 60 Minutes aired a story called On Demand , which was all about ‘attachment parenting’. Put simply, attachment parenting is basically where the parents respond immediately to the natural needs and demands of their child/children.

This includes feeding (breastfeeding more specifically) until the child is ready to be weaned off the boob and other things including co-sleeping (where the child sleeps in its parent’s bed at night so that they are in close physical contact at all times) and emotional contact (if they child cries it is immediately soothed so that they aren’t stressed or scared).

60 Minutes interviewed several mothers who practiced fulltime attachment parenting including several who were still breastfeeding their children at the age of four.

Now I have absolutely no issue with breastfeeding – that’s not my issue. I plan on breastfeeding and I am all for the nutritional and emotional benefits it gives the child. But I can’t help but feel that these parents, although doctors say they will probably raise more emotionally tuned-in kids, will also raise highly needy and dependent kids because they are choosing to give in to the wants of their children who are nearly at the age of starting school.

In the series The Slap on ABC, Melissa George’s character Rosie is an earth mother and attachment parent to her four-year-old son, Hugo. I will never forget the scene where the child runs up to his mother, wailing (because he did the wrong thing and was reprimanded by another adult) and basically pulls down her top and starts sucking because he is upset. No permission is asked, it is just assumed and his mother is happy to oblige much to the disgust of the other adults.

Now I am not debating that the role of a mother is to nurture her family - we were put on this planet to reproduce and it's a gift that I am happy to have been given.

But I think that when you’re a parent, it’s important that your child knows that you love them no matter what and that you go through certain means of showing and telling them this. Your child will grow up knowing how much they are loved because of how you show your affection for them – not because of how much time they have spent attached to your nipple.

I don’t think that mothers should be made to feel bad for not being able to be a full-time attachment parent and breastfeed on demand because they have to go back to work after six months to help support the family. Yes, some mothers have to put their kids into day care – shock horror!

I suppose that I should mention that I am not against attachment parenting at all - I am against the women who choose to put other mothers down because of their superior attitudes and 'I'm better than you' mentality that some mothers have adopted.  

Unfortunately you can’t have it all (be a fulltime attachment parent and be with your child 24/7 and also go back to a fulltime job) so now we have this division that has been created between attachment and non-attachment parents. Why can’t we just be called parents – mothers and fathers? Why has this war between mothers been created when we should really just be supporting each other for doing the best that we can?  

I love the fact that some mothers are able to stay at home with their children and immediately be there for them when they need to be fed or consoled – I would love to give up work forever and just focus on raising a family, but that’s not a reality for me and it’s not for a majority of other women out there as well.

The attachment parenting debate also focuses in on co-sleeping. The 60 Minutes story highlighted pros and cons for this – some parents are just lazy and can’t be bothered getting up to their child in the middle of the night. Other parents are so in-tuned with their baby that if the mother wakes, checks on her child and goes back to sleep, that the baby will often wake, realise they are in close contact with their mother and father, and immediately fall back to sleep without a whimper.

There are some mothers who also swear by self-soothing, where the child cries itself to sleep and gets itself over any issue it had. These mothers have been branded harsh and careless. I have a massive issue with this. The child isn’t loved any less just because it is teaching itself to calm down – it is just the parent’s choice to put their child into this particular routine and the child eventually adapts to it.

Above all, I feel like my husband summed it up best last night by stating that it has become more about the mother and her choices as a parent, and less about the actual baby. Why is the media focusing on driving a wedge between parents when they should be focusing on the good things mothers and fathers are achieving together?

This debate is not for everyone and I don’t have much more to say than this: I am sure each parent strives to be the best mother or father to their children that they can be, and in my book, that’s good enough.