Alpha Mums!

I don't know about you, but I am feeling the pressure to alpha up my life a bit.

The Alpha Mum is the latest marketing buzzword, referring to the modern mum who is educated, tech-savvy - and a big influence on how other mums spend money.
First, the alpha mums had to be, completely conversant in the latest techno-gizmos, hot vacation spots, parenting trends and nail polish colours. Alpha mums had to be connected, concerned and influencing peers 24/7. An Alpha Mum is online 87 minutes a day - seven percent more than the typical internet user. The Alpha Mum also has a high social-networking factor online. Alpha mums had to somehow put themselves and their kids first, never settling for second (or beta) best. Type A meets Martha Stewart meets Mary Poppins. The alpha mum was the woman of the moment.

Until the Alpha Wife showed up.

Yup, according to research, 22 percent of all wives now make more money than their husbands. A sizable chunk of wives, more than 20 percent, are more educated than their husbands too. In short, smarter and richer, yet somehow, I bet still doing more housework than ever. That doesn't sound very alpha to me, but it has a lot of people atwitter about the rise of the power wife.

Is it possible to be both an alpha mum and an alpha wife? Frankly, I am sure that there are capable women who are everything alpha.

Attached at the Heart

Attachment Parenting

When my daughter Eva was born my good friend Hellen, a psychotherapist, turned me on to Attachment Parenting and sent me a Sears Book – The Baby Book and a note that said “I’d have half the patients I have now if everyone was raised with Attachment Parenting.” And she really believed in it. People in her field talked about it a lot, and the importance of the bond between parents and child.

Attachment parenting is an approach to child-rearing intended to forge strong, healthy bond between parents and children. For many parents, this approach feels instinctive and natural. And anthropological research suggests that some attachment parenting practices—-such as baby-wearing and co-sleeping—-have deep roots in our evolutionary past .

The term, "attachment parenting", was conceived by pediatrician William Sears and his wife Martha, to describe a highly responsive, attentive style of caring for a child. Attachment parenting promotes physical and emotional closeness between parent and child through what the Sears refer to as the "Baby Bs." The Baby Bs are bonding, breastfeeding, baby wearing, bed sharing and boundary building.
Attachment parenting advocates encourage parents to hold their baby often in the early sensitive weeks of life to foster bonding. Breastfeeding is promoted because it enhances the mother's natural instincts to respond to her baby through physical closeness, hormonal influences and promotion of attentiveness. Both babywearing, the practice of carrying the baby on the parents' body with an infant carrier or sling, and bedsharing, parents and babies sleeping in the same bed, provide additional opportunities for closeness. Boundary building is a discipline philosophy that entails responding to the genuine, age appropriate needs of the child and using gentle guidance. All of the Baby Bs are aimed at promoting a trusting, intuitive relationship between parents and baby through the physical and emotional closeness that makes it easier to know and appropriately respond to the baby's needs.

Attachment parenting is about knowing your baby and responding to what your instincts and knowledge of your family tell you is right. Attachment parenting is a vehicle to get to know your baby and develop your own unique and sensitive parenting style.