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.