The arrival of a new baby brings about a turnaround or a resolution in your life. One moment, you’re busy planning weekend getaways, date nights, and perhaps holiday trips, and the next, you’re busy looking after your sweet baby and attending to their every need.
A quick reminder is that you shouldn’t forget to look after yourself. At the end of those fuzzy first few months of day and night feeding periods and sleepless nights, you would probably want to take a deep breath and decide how you will go about this parenting stuff.
It’s time to plan how to be a super mom or super dad in a way that conforms to your personal beliefs and values. There is no perfect approach to parenting.
At some point, you might feel the urge to adopt a specific parenting style, but in reality, parenting is a whole journey, and the method you wish to adopt can take time to figure out.
It could change even when you figure out a specific style because your family needs are ever-evolving. Let’s look closely at the meaning of attachment parenting and how it’s done.
You can also generate a parenting style that works well for you. However, remember that emphasis is placed on using evidence-based practices that promote your child’s maximum health and safety.
What is Attachment Parenting?
Attachment parenting is a contemporary principle based on the attachment theory, coined by two child psychologists, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.
This theory states that a strong emotional and physical attachment to at least one primary caregiver is critical to personal development.
Attachment parenting stresses that the emotional and physical bond between a child and a parent is formed through designated “tools.”
These tools are created to enhance physical contact, maximum empathy, and responsiveness.
It is believed that this approach will boost both parent and child’s confidence because the parent gets to know how to identify and respond to their baby’s needs correctly, and the baby also feels confident that their needs will be met.
Basic Tenets of Attachment Parenting
Every loving parent intends to be watchful and attentive to their child’s needs, but the difference between parenting styles is how they go about it.
Below are the guides to attachment parenting, known as the “Baby B’s.” As you read through, consider which tool is best for your child.
Suppose you feel there’s a tool you aren’t comfortable with, as some don’t align with the current American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations. In that case, you should talk to your pediatrician about it to ensure your baby is safe.
Birth Bonding
Attachment parenting sees the early bonding between parents and their baby immediately and a few weeks after birth as an important phase in creating a healthy and long-term parent-child attachment.
In this approach, there’s a lot of skin contact and consistent togetherness between parent and baby, with a high amount of infant nursing from the mother especially, and this could be done using the tools below:
Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is an important, healthy way to nurse and calm your baby. It brings about physical contact and a chance to answer your baby’s hunger needs.
Breastfeeding also activates a mother’s body to release hormones, potentially boosting mothering impulses.
Mothers listen; we know breastfeeding can be physically and emotionally exhausting.
There are instances where new moms want to breastfeed their babies but are unable to do so for several reasons, and other moms, too, choose not to breastfeed their babies for very genuine reasons.
Although attachment parenting and science establish that breastfeeding is the best source of nutrition for your baby, your baby’s source of nutrition and mother-baby bonding can thrive through other feeding methods.
Breastfeeding is a personal choice motivated by what allows you and your baby to thrive.
Baby Wearing
You probably have seen every type of sling and wrap. According to the attachment parenting view, babywearing brings physical closeness and trust between the baby and its caregiver.
Babies can safely learn about their surroundings, and parents can mutually learn about their babies through such closeness.
Bed Sharing
This might be the most contentious of all the attachment parenting tools. This approach explains that bed-sharing reduces a baby’s restlessness at night and makes nighttime breastfeeding less stressful for the mother.
However, research has shown that there are serious risks that come with co-sleeping. These include but are not limited to suffocation, oxygen deprivation, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and being caught in the covers by the caregiver while sleeping.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released the safe sleep guidelines, which recommend sleeping in the same room with your baby for 6 months and up to 1 year but in different sleeping areas.
It also states that room-sharing and not bed-sharing can reduce the risk of SIDS by 50 percent; bed-sharing only increases it. Other safe sleep suggestions from the AAP include:
- Preventing your baby from exposure to alcohol, illicit drugs, and smoke.
- Placing your child to sleep with their back on a firm surface.
- Give your child a pacifier at nap and bedtime, although pacifiers tend to disturb breastfeeding.
- Tight-fitting sheets in a bare cot with no toys, blankets, or pillows.
Belief in Baby’s Cries
In attachment parenting, a baby’s cries are seen as their own way of communicating when they’re in need and not as a form of manipulation.
Attachment parents are quick to compassionately attend to their baby’s cry to enhance the growth of infant-caregiver trust and become acquainted with their baby’s communication style.
Balance and Boundaries
The notion of balance is hard to meet 100 percent, especially during the early days of raising an infant.
Striving for balance involves recognizing and meeting everyone’s needs, not just the child’s. In an ideal world, every family member’s needs are met all the time, everyone is happy and healthy, and the family is perfectly balanced.
But in the real world, nobody’s family life is always perfectly balanced. It is not unusual for a parent to feel out of balance sometimes. Parents continuously look for creative ways to balance their personal and family life.
Attachment parenting supports the need to find ways to respond calmly to the needs of your baby, yourself, and others in your family.
Attachment Parenting Infants (Birth to Age 1)
Contrasting with attachment parenting are other styles that use the “baby training” approach, seen in the “cry it out” technique that creates more parent-infant autonomy and a strict schedule for sleeping and feeding.
However, in attachment parenting, babies’ cries are viewed as a communication tool, which allows the baby to guide these needs rather than their parent affirming them.
The following are examples of what attachment parenting techniques might look like from birth to age 1.
Birth
- The beginning of physical bonding and skin-to-skin contact between mother and child starts Immediately after birth.
- Breastfeeding also starts Immediately after birth.
- Both parents hold their newborns often.
- Parents start listening to their babies’ cries and signals to learn their cues, needs, and reactions to certain things.
- The mother sets up breastfeeding with a required feeding schedule.
- The use of pacifiers should be shunned, and breastfeeding should be used instead.
0 to 12 months
- Parents use a safe baby carrier to hold and carry their babies often.
- The mother allows the baby to direct when feeding happens, and this fosters persistent breastfeeding.
- Parents respond to their babies’ cries as quickly as possible and respectfully attend to all their needs.
- Parents study the behavior of the baby, facial expressions, and ways to build knowledge about the baby’s temperament, needs, and overall health.
- Parent and child co-sleep (the AAP does not recommend this) or sleep in the same room( this is recommended)
- There is an emphasis on empathy towards the baby’s negative emotions or outbursts.
- The use of pacifiers should be avoided.
Attachment Parenting Toddlers
Attachment parenting in toddlers follows the same principles of parent-child connection, but the tools change as the baby moves into this autonomous stage of growth.
The style is primarily child-guided, and it is proposed to keep an open time frame for tools used for weaning and those related to co-sleeping and breastfeeding based on the baby’s readiness signs.
The attachment parenting style in toddlers may seem different for each family. However, there are some ways the principles can be approached with your toddler:
- Depending on the child’s cues, breastfeeding may continue even when the child is more than a year old.
- The parents verify any negative emotions like anger or fear put on by the child that may be due to inappropriate behavior such as crying, hitting, etc.
- Parenting empathy guides responding to the needs of the child.
- Co-sleeping continues until it has been ascertained that the child can sleep on their own.
- There should be more physical closeness, touches, and cuddles from the parent to the toddler.
- Parents should allow the child to get independent and make decisions on their own when safe and right.
- Discipline should be done gently and with guidance rather than resulting in strict and severe punishment.
Benefits of Attachment Parenting
Research has it that the benefit of attachment parenting might be related to breastfeeding, and it has numerous proven medical, developmental, neuromotor, and nutritional benefits.
According to the AAP guideline in 2012, exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for up to 6 months and continued with solids for up to 1 year or even longer.
Besides, another surprising benefit of this parenting method, as described in a 2019 meta-analysis, is that children whose parents listened and were attentive to their physical and emotional needs were more likely to develop better language skills than children who didn’t undergo this style.
Another benefit of attachment parenting is the ability to regulate emotions. A 2010 article concluded that infants introduced to a highly responsive parenting style tend to cry less.
Also, older children influenced by responsive parenting are known to regulate emotions such as distress, fear, and anger.
This, in turn, lowers their exposure to stress, which can affect brain development negatively and the capacity to handle stress later in life.
The Drawbacks of Attachment Parenting
The most crucial aspect that poses a threat to attachment parenting is bed-sharing. As earlier discussed, co-sleeping increases the risk of SIDS and suffocation than room-sharing. In this practice, the baby is positioned in a different, safe sleeping space.
Although the effects are not recorded, practicing attachment parenting tools can be very demanding both physically and emotionally on the parent (the breastfeeding mother) or the primary caregiver.
The emphasis on on-demand breastfeeding and continuous physical closeness in this approach may hinder the mother from observing her sleep patterns, returning to work, or even maintaining the same level of intimacy with her partner for some time.
Hence, all the attachment parenting tools may not suit some families’ lives properly.
Final Note
The presence of a newborn tends to bring about inner joy, so when choosing a parenting approach, choose the one that conforms to your family values, beliefs, life, and goals.
The most forceful extending benefit of attachment parenting is building a responsive parenting style that continues to meet your child’s physical and emotional needs sensitively.
Though the benefits of breastfeeding are well known, it’s still an individual decision for each mother. Precaution should also be taken when it comes to co-sleeping.
It is suggested that you talk to your child’s pediatrician about safe sleeping before using the attachment parenting tool.
