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Attachment parenting: what conservative Christians and left wing parents have in common
Becoming a mother got Dana Kamin walking again.
Four years ago, when Kamin arrived at an airport in Haiti, she rolled off the plane in a wheelchair. Still recovering from being hit by a car months before, the chair had become a necessary part of her life.
Melodie Towers is an attached mom who runs the blog "Breastfeeding Moms Unite". Photo courtesy of Melodie Towers.
But when Kamin caught a flight home one week later, a new baby daughter had replaced the mobility aid. And she never used her chair again. Kamin had willed her way to recovery via motherhood.
“If I had not had the motivation of this adoption finalizing, I would have gotten more depressed,” Kamin said.
Kamin’s determination to recover is impressive. And it’s nothing compared to the dedication she has for her daughter, Maliya, who is now five years old.
Since Maliya came home, Kamin, a busy single mother, used each bottlefeeding as an opportunity to bond. To do so, she’d try and make eye contact with her daughter. Even though Maliya never looked into her mother’s eyes, Kamin never gave up trying.
“She was not aware yet that I was her rock, her foundation,” Kamin said.
Despite her injuries from the accident, Kamin wore her daughter as much as possible in a baby carrier. Every night, she rocked Maliya to sleep.
She also fed Maliya on demand. In the orphanage, Maliya had slept through the night and been fed on a schedule. At home with Kamin and able to ask for milk whenever she wanted, Maliya was hungry all the time. She woke frequently throughout the night to have more milk. Kamin jokes that she had created a monster.
But it paid off. When Maliya came home, her weight was so low it didn’t even register on the North American growth charts. Within weeks, she gained five pounds, and hit the charts.
Maliya is now a thriving five year old. She and Kamin still sleep in the same bed. Maliya has a bedroom, but she doesn’t want to use it. It’s more than fine with Kamin. She worked hard to get this bond to happen.
“My approach from the start … was to try and replace with her what she had lost her first nine months of life,” Kamin said.
Kamin’s parenting tools are all common aspects of attachment parenting. It’s a parenting philosophy named by parenting experts Dr. and Martha Sears, though it’s recognized as a method of parenting that’s been used a lot longer.
Attached parents generally do not believe in letting children cry themselves to sleep. In the early years, it usually includes behaviours such as co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding and baby wearing. But attachment parenting is less about following a strict set of rules than it is about being responsive to the needs of one’s children.
“I would argue with people who say you need to breastfeed to attach,” Kamin said. “I’ve seen people breastfeed where they never make eye contact with their kids.”
Judy Arnall, a parenting expert and mother of five, co-founded Attachment Parenting Canada. She agrees with Kamin.
“(Attachment parenting) is about parents following their instincts,” Arnall said. “It’s following instincts of humans over thousands of years, more so than following instincts however you were raised.”
Attached mom to Maliya, Dana Kamin.
Arnall says if there is anything that attached parents have in common, it is that often they are adults who did not like how they were raised in childhood.
“As (parents) go into (parenthood they) see what is available and make a decision to parent a lot different than the way they were parented,” Arnall said.
And it attracts parents of all stripes. Kamin is a social worker. She says she has an anti-oppression approach to life. She’s a white, queer, single parent living with her adopted Haitian daughter.
“I’ve done one of the most traditional things,” Kamin said. “And yet I’m paving a whole new way. I am a part of a whole new generation, and so is Maliya, for queer identified parents, for single parents around adoption, around parenting.”
At her home in California, birth doula and mother of four Nancy Connelly parents in a way similar to Kamin. When Connelly’s older children were babies, she breastfeed, co-slept and wore them in carriers. It’s what came naturally to her, and it’s how she wanted to be a mother.
But Connelly says she’s had a harder time using the same attachment parenting tools for her younger children, who are two six year olds also adopted from Haiti. The twins, Seth and Amara, were 18 months old when they came home. That’s double the age of Maliya, who was nine months.
“I tried attachment parenting when (the twins) came home because that’s all I knew and it just did not work,” Connelly said. “Just that year and a half in an orphanage, was enough to cause some damage. That was very hard. … Living the reality of having children who didn’t have their needs met in babyhood.”
Connelly says she and her husband are still trying to figure out how to parent their twins. Even though the attachment parenting tools haven’t worked for her youngest children the philosophy is the same.
“It’s a way of being sensitive to your children,” Connelly said.
It may be where the similarities between the Kamin and Connelly households end. Connelly is a Christian parent, and a Republican. She does say though that she has “Democratic leanings”, and is very concerned about the environment. According to Connelly, attachment parenting coincides with her religious beliefs.
Attachment parenting is a popular choice for Christian identified parents. Among the many books they have written, Dr. and Martha Sears also have a Christian Parenting Book.
And in the ever-expanding world of mom blogs, there’s a fair share dedicated to attachment parenting, Christian style. Often other posts on the blogs indicate the blogger’s conservative views.
There’s also a lot of discussion about Christian parenting experts whose parenting advice is completely different than attachment parenting. Recently, in the States, two child deaths have been linked to parents who practiced advice from Michael and Debi Pearl. The Pearls say they are against child abuse. They believe in physical discipline, and advise disciplining children with a quarter inch plumber’s supply line. The other experts are Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo. Their recommendations of strict scheduling, among other things, also receive criticism from attached parents. All the parents are Christian, conservative, and the parenting style is vastly different.
Arnall is familiar with “the Ezzos and the Pearls”, she says. She credits Dr. and Martha Sears for the shift in Christian parenting trends.
“I think he’s definitely brought attachment parenting to the mainstream,” Arnall said. “He’s really helped the Christian community accept that there are other parenting methods.”
For her part, Connelly says she didn’t know the Sears were Christian before she picked up their Baby Book. She says it wouldn’t have made a difference to her. Connelly has friends who parent the same as she does. And they are a diversity of religions.
Melodie Towers is an attached mother of two in British Columbia who runs the popular blog Breastfeeding Moms Unite. Towers says she has seen a diversity of political beliefs on online discussions, but that generally attached parents get along.
“People have come forward and said I’m a Latter Day Saint and an attached mom,” Towers said. “I’ve had some very strong feminists come through my blog …the whole gamete.”
Towers thinks the reason why attachment parenting attracts so many different types of parents is because it’s about parenting based on instincts.
“It’s about following what you believe is right,” Towers said.
But it’s not always that simple. Toronto-based parenting expert Alyson Schäfer believes many attached parents misunderstand attachment. She says parents think that if they discipline their children, they are going to interfere with bonding. It leads to over pampering children, which Schäfer refers to as a plague. She says research shows it’s as harmful as abuse.
“I’ve seen sleep exhausted parents who are too afraid to give up the family bed because they think somehow that their child crying out to them is emotionally distraught and that they are going to break the primary bond by not claiming back the matrimonial bed,” Schäfer said. “I promise you that child is more robust. I promise you should save the marriage and let the child handle a little emotional discomfort.”
Yet many attached parents say they have no problem enforcing boundaries. Monique Plessas, a journalism student in Toronto and a mother of three, has practiced attachment parenting since her first child was born. She says she’s had no problem with, for example, getting her children into their own bed. It’s something each of her children have done at their own pace.
“I’m very much guided by the kids and their needs,” Plessas said.
“And I say needs. I feel I’m a pretty good compass on their wants and their needs. I feel like I don’t give in to their wants.”
- Meri Perra is an attached parent and a feminist.
