So my wife’s pregnant. Woo! Except for the preparation – you can read until the kid’s 18 and not possibly catch up with all the info out there.
We have friends who do attachment parenting for their now 2.5-year-old. Although the method as they practice it doesn’t appeal to me – the parents don’t look happy, which is a key criterion for me – I was curious about the method. So I checked out The Attachment Parenting Book, by William Sears, M.D., and Martha Sears, R.N. They coined the term, apparently, so I figure they’re the experts.
I’m 54 pages in, and it’s kind of interesting, although the combination of vaguely referenced studies and anecdotal evidence isn’t wowing me with its scientific rigor. But whatever.
This is a prelude to a basic question: early in the book, the Sears’ write: “Attachment parenting is what most parents would do anyway if they had the confidence and support they needed to follow their own intuitions.”
This seems to me to basically be a rephrasing of Dr. Spock’s famous opening sentence from Baby and Child Care: “You know more [about parenting] than you think you do.”
I haven’t actually read B&CC, though. And I’m sure he doesn’t promote the 7 “tools” the Sears recommend for successful attachment parenting (birth bonding, breastfeeding, babywearing, bedding close to baby, belief in baby’s cry, balance and boundaries, and beware of baby trainers), some of them are probably in the book.
So how do Dr. Spock and Dr. Sears differ? Are they very far apart, or is Sears and attachment parenting a contemporary version of Dr. Spock’s method(s)?
Note: I don’t want this to be a debate about attachment parenting or parenting methods in general. Take it to Great Debates. I may have some questions about the science behind attachment parenting at some point, but I’ll start a new thread for it if I don’t tire of the subject beforehand.