Not that I was reading comments, because I don’t, but I did happen to see a comment as I went to post something the other day which I wanted to write about.
The comment was snarky (surprise surprise) and it was about Attachment Parenting. It said, “How could you practice AP as a single mom? Hmmmm?”
Well, I’m going to go ahead and answer this despite my eye-rolling at the snark factor.
The principles of Attachment Parenting are generally accepted as:
1. Educated birth choices, emphasizing the significance of an unmedicated birth.
2. Breastfeeding and educated bottle feeding.
3. Using slings and carrying your baby when you are with them.
4. Sleeping near your baby safely.
5. Having a responsible and consistent caregiver (yes, because we are primates, it is preferably the mother) in the formative weeks/months/years.
6. Gentle discipline: not hitting your child, believing in their cries and their needs as normal and not manipulation.
Do any of those sound like things that can only work for parents who are home with their children? Right. None of them have anything to do with what you do from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Working parents practice Attachment Parenting all the time. For the record, so do parents who adopt babies (there goes #1), bottle feed for any number of reasons (#2), hate slings (#3), don’t sleep with their babies (#4), and use nannies and daycare (#5). There’s no hard and fast “one way” to do AP.
The only principle of Attachment Parenting I have yet to encounter someone not participating in while still calling themselves an AP parent is hitting children as a disciplinary policy. Other than that, people do it all sorts of ways. AP is not about staying home with your kids. Period.
I hope that answers the question. Happy parenting!
