I'm on a train with limited internets. What's attachment parenting, mom?
Baby should spend nearly all its time in skin-to-skin contact with a parent, and the goal of parenting in the first two years is to be as responsive as possible, as immediately as possible, to the needs of the baby. The idea being that this instills the belief in the child that their needs ought to be met, and that as adults they'll do what it takes to get their needs met.
(Other stuff about how "needs" are different from "wants".)
Attachment parenting is pretty much the opposite of "fuck off out and come back when you dinner's ready". You wind up with an almost 8 year old child physically attached to you, who will not go outside to play unless you go with her. I have my regrets.
I think I surprised a friend of mine once when I told her that she would never find a less receptive audience than me for the argument that some women give their children too much attention and affection.
The corollary risk, however, is insufferable assholes with huge senses of entitlement. Which isn't particularly different than the last sentence of 2 there.
4: huh, that's funny, since one of the central "selling points" of attachment parenting is that if children form very secure attachments at a early age, they'll actually develop more independence easier and earlier than otherwise (because of the additional confidence the secure attachment gives them).
So maybe you're just doing it wrong?
I think that future impressions that kids retain are based on interactions with the parents after personality is pretty well formed.
I think that others here have pointed out how much difference there is between the advice given to parents adopting kids from distressed environments (don't worry) and the advice given to parents of newborns (worry!!).
Personally, I think that peer interactions, including sibs, become very important for kids very soon, by 4 or so.
For the first year, or so, I mostly think that a soft version of attachment parenting is the easiest on everyone. I'm not crazy about the mother-specific centrality of the ideology; I think a baby needs insane amounts of holding and cuddling and attention from someone it knows and is attached to, but short of actual breastfeeding it doesn't really matter who the cuddler is: mother, father, other family, paid caregiver. But it's just easier to give the baby the attention it wants (if it's practical at all) than to try and convince it to be less needy.
I do think trying to attribute personality to parenting style is goofy. I have easy, happy, not particularly needy kids, but I really doubt that I can attribute that to having done anything right -- we just pulled lucky cards on that front.
9: My guess is that anybody who has something that can be called an "ideology" for that first year either has enough money for 24 hour nannies or got the world's calmest baby.
I am in the don't worry camp:
A lot of parenting practices are driven by the desire to get kids into elite colleges. This paper suggests that Canada with multiple good colleges with relatively similar quality results in radically different parenting styles:
http://econ.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/Rugrat.pdf
I'm convinced that we have close to zero control over how our children turn out. Predestination.
Ok, maybe I'm trolling, but only a bit.
12: Within a really broad realm of basically loving and safe parenting, I'd agree with you; like, no infant care decision that anyone reading this is at all likely to make is likely to do much to affect their kid's personality.
Isn't it pretty swipple to tell other parents "UR doinit rong?"
Nah, I think that's broadbased across classes.
|| Shit... I think I just swallowed a piece of aluminum foil. How long do I have left to live?
|>
but I really doubt that I can attribute that to having done anything right
I am not, nor shall I ever be, a parent, so I don't really know how it works, but I just don't buy this.
Eat a whole bunch of ketchup. That dissolves foil.
11: "rather than simply asking parents who commit various levels of time to their children about how important college is to them, we devised an extremely abstract and simplified model and tested it against nation-level data loaded with potential confounding factors."
Fucking economists.
This is going to cause alzheimer's, isn't it?
20: Are you trying to get him to belch hydrogen gas?
The idea being that this instills the belief in the child that their needs ought to be met, and that as adults they'll do what it takes to get their needs met.
By others?
There must be a way around, or through, the SWPL-on-the-Internet collision of "I don't want my child to be an asshole," "I don't want my child to be a feckless loser like too many people I observed while growing up" and "perhaps quixotically, I would prefer not to impose my Vince Lombardi fantasies on a defenseless infant."
We've really cycled through some "Urple Classic" in the past 48 hours. If the next thread is about sending dogs to a farm, we will officially be entering some kind of spacetime vortex into the past.
Oh, wait, the stomach acids are sufficient for that. Urple, you're going to want to get some matches. This could be cool.
Wow, that Jong piece is epic trolling. Is she trying to get hired at Slate?
"rather than simply asking parents who commit various levels of time to their children about how important college is to them, we devised an extremely abstract and simplified model and tested it against nation-level data loaded with potential confounding factors."
I am just wishing I lived in Canada.
From the point of view of someone with no real stake in the topic, it seemed like a very slim good point wearing a very thick troll-fur coat. It was a fun read, though.
The idea being that this instills the belief in the child that their needs ought to be met, and that as adults they'll do what it takes to get their needs met.
I was under the impression that the idea, at least, was more that it is supposed to help them feel secure, so that they don't grow up anxious about getting their needs met, and feel comfortable exploring and developing independence from a secure base.
So, the dream is that it won't just head off the situation where you're too insecure to look after your own needs, but also the situation where you're so unsure that you'll be able to get them met that you're continually preemptively freaking out about it. (Like how people whose siblings always ate the best food before they could get to it at the table tend to bolt their dinner.)
31: It is important to note that this kind of developmental story is exactly as well grounded as evolutionary stories about the veldt.
I think that the goal parents should strive for is to instill a deep sense of independence, confidence, and common sense in their kids. If it all works out, when you tell them to fuck off till dinner is ready in their teen years, they can won't do drugs, drink, or engage in risky sex. Instead they'll do this
that is to say that they'll they'll do this
(Like how people whose siblings always ate the best food before they could get to it at the table tend to bolt their dinner.)
Wait, we've never eaten together. How did you know?
19: Maybe a behavioral economist is an economist who doesn't think that conducting an objective survey among an authentically representative sample of people to determine their responses to various situations is the "simple" alternative to making a mathematical model.
31: It is important to note that this kind of developmental story is exactly as well grounded as evolutionary stories about the veldt.
I'm not saying it's correct, I'm saying it's the idea. Also, I will point out that it's a lot easier (though not actually easy) to test developmental stories about behavior than their evolutionary counterparts.
31: I dunno. I'm just phrasing it how my therapist phrased it to me. To her, "willing to demand that your needs be met" was a good thing - ie, your selfworth is secure enough that you speak up for yourself.
Further to her perspective is that people who secure their own needs have enough brain left over to be most empathetic and compassionate people. People who do not get their needs met are consumed with getting their needs met.
Is there any, like, evidence involved in any of this? My basic assumption, as with all the fretting about getting kids into good preschools and kindergartens and elementary schools, is that it all makes essentially zero difference in the long run.
I was under the impression that the idea, at least, was more that it is supposed to help them feel secure, so that they don't grow up anxious about getting their needs met, and feel comfortable exploring and developing independence from a secure base.
That was my idea as well, to the extent that there was an idea behind what we did, which was more or less what people call "attachment parenting". But we didn't call it that; we didn't call it anything, it was just what came naturally. I'm resisting the urge to rant about Jong's army of straw men, but I should be working, and I think that an argument that trots out Madonna and Angelina Jolie as examples of a widespread trend isn't really worth engaging.
My guess is that we're all built with a narrowish range of temperaments, and parenting/enviornment determines where you fall within that range. As with pretty much everything else. Although some traits probably have broader ranges.
There is an idea in the writings of Winnicott that always appealed to me--I feel like everything I'm saying in this thread should have an implied IANAP, by the way, P for Parent-or-ever-planning-to-be--of "the good enough mother." The idea is that the best thing is a balance between meeting the child's needs and, well, not always and immediately meeting them, because it helps them find the boundary between "me" and "outside world"/helps them be neither hopeless narcissists nor...actually I can't remember what, to Winnicott's way of thinking, happens if you err on the side of too little response/care. As a very strange professor of mine said in discussing this in terms of pre-oedipal development, "sometimes the breast is on the phone."
That article seems stupid [Erica Jong on parenting is about as relevant and timely as the Captain and Tenille on parenting] but I'm extremely non-fond of the Sears parenting books. If "attachment parenting" just means "be affectionate with, and attentive to" your children, it's fine and what I try to do, but there's a lot of stuff that goes way beyond that in the Sears books. They basically imply that if you don't wear your kid on you 24/7 as an infant you will later have a totally undisciplined monster on your hands who is incapable of being independent or forming relationships. That's just total bullshit that's pernicious, particularly for mothers.
I bet Tenille wears her babies.
sometimes the breast is on the phone
sexting?
I endorse 41, which includes, I'm sure, an implicit understanding that parenting can be so bad (and really, we're talking criminally bad here) to drive a kid out of range.
Is there any, like, evidence involved in any of this?
Not for the sort of circumstances the people these books are marketed to are likely to find themselves in.
There is decent evidence about extreme cases--child soldiers, death camp survivors, wire monkey mommies--where the effects are obvious and observable. But I don't think anyone wants to make inferences from these cases to a question like "should Veruca Salt's mom have given her more skin to skin contact?"
43: Not long ago I came across a quotation by Winnicott --"It is joy to be hidden, but disaster not to be found." That is all I have ever read by him, but I like it very much.
wire monkey mommies
We fired the wire monkey nanny. She wanted us to pay her Social Security.
43: I found that the best antidote to parenting books (and I agree about Sears) is a) other parenting books, because they tend to cancel each other out, and b) being so tired and harried raising your kids that you stop reading them.
43: Yeah, this. Most of the general attachment-parenting style advice is generally, I think, good advice for infant care: the kid really does need a crazy amount of snuggling and attention, and it's easier on everyone if you surrender and do what the kid wants, when the kind wants (infants, here. Just talking about infants) if you can manage it at all. But the broader strokes in the Sears book about the absolute necessity of total abnegation before the child's needs, particularly for the mother, is kind of problematic, and to the extent that Jong has any legitimate gripe, I think that's what it would be about.
Agreee with 50. I kinda like that British woman, though, Penelope Leach, mostly because her book includes letters from parents to previous editions that she (in a nice understated way) makes fun of.
I was actually fond of Dr. Spock for one thing -- he's got a really clear style for describing minor weird baby ailments that you shouldn't worry about. There was a back of the book section where you could look up symptoms and get a nice clear description and diagnosis with a recommended course of action, which was usually "Don't worry about it, it'll go away." I had a Leach book, but I remember it as more anthropology of babies than actual advice. But it was interestingly sciency.
53: Yes, Spock was well-thumbed in our household. Everything else basically ignored after a few months into the first one.
I think the "bling without rivalry" book is good.
I don't have my copy in front of me, but the Leach book I have has a section called "Parents Have Their Say" (phrasing in itself that's kinda hillarious to my USian ears). She reprints letters saying things like "I don't want my child getting too attached to a nanny, instead of me, so I've been rotating through new au pairs from Poland every 3 months. Is this a good idea?"
Anyhow, this was a minor joy when I was freaking out and reading parenting books immediately after my kid's birth.
"I don't want my child getting too attached to a nanny, instead of me, so I've been rotating through new au pairs from Poland every 3 months. Is this a good idea?"
Also, I make them wear barbed-wire outfits.
I am right there with LB and Halford. To the degree that we do things attachment-ly, it absolutely follows strong lines of laziness rather than guilt. Elaborate training schemes to make infants less needy sound exhausting, cuddling is nice. Also, we lucked into a very friendly baby.
55. I thought urple was going rapper on us for a second.
55-56: Damn. I was hoping there was a nascent babydazzling trend.
No fighting, kids—you can each have your own diamond-encrusted dental grill!
that's not really a baby book so much as a parenting one, though, so nevermind anyway. I'm not actually sure I read any baby books, come to think of it.
64: "Goodnight Moon" is a good place to start.
I was just planning on sending my future hypothetical offspring to Unfogged for proper rearing. They come out knowing how to type already, right?
They come out knowing how to type already, right?
Can't be much worse than me, anyway.
69: To the Mineshaft for proper rearing?
68: Maybe you'd should read my thesis on class and economic order in Boyton's "Hippos Go Berserk."
Disagree with 66.
Yeah, I think Struwwelpeter is the thing for impressionable minds.
71: maybe you can write a book about it, titled "Everybody Peeps".
I've mentioned this before, but the best antidote to parenting books are books intended for adoptive parents. They are absolutley reassuring that whatever happened to your child before [whatever age you gain custody] is likely to be completely irrelevant. Sometimes these books share co-authors with the books that insist you play classical music to your fetus.
the books that insist you play classical music to your fetus
If you have twins, they can argue over who does the best cover of Bach.
I don't recall ever reading any parenting book. The wife and I have very different philosophies of childrearing, and are both argumentative enough that, through the magic of the adversary system, the right result was in each case obtained.
Reading you folks on the subject makes me think of how in those old movies, and I guess in real life, expectant fathers were sent to boil water as labor got intense. Not because boiled water was really likely to be needed, but to keep them from underfoot. These books might well be a way of occupying overactive swpl imaginations, so plain instinct can get the actual work done unimpeded. (Sort of like Grateful Dead lyrics . . .)
Reading you folks on the subject
But by and large, the people here are pretty sane. I recently got signed up for a local Mamas facebook group, and wow are the people neurotic. "Which dish detergent do you guys use for cloth diapers? I used X but it's a problem having to drive up to Austin to find it" was the gem of today.
dish detergent do you guys use for cloth diapers
You're soaking in it!
We used Dreft on the baby clothes. If you sprinkled Dreft on an iguana, I'd probably try to rock it to sleep.
The boiling water is never used to sterilize things? Don't you have to, like, sterilize the baby?
78: Yeah. If there's one parenting thing I get more judgmental about than another, it's people who get freaked out about minor dietary/cleaning product decisions as if they had major health consequences. While some people may get rashes from anything other than super-unscented-non-adulterated-whatever, most people don't. So making yourself miserable getting your supply of detergent is kind of nuts; for ninety-nine out of a hundred babies, the brand of detergent they sell in the local supermarket will not hurt your baby.
Same with dietary controllingness, particularly for breastfeeding mothers. The fact that you ate some cheese (broccoli, whatever) and then your baby had a fussy night does not mean that your baby is reacting to cow-milk proteins (cabbage, whatever) in your milk. It's not impossible that it might be true, but babies cry a lot even when they're fine: you can't diagnose a dietary sensitivity like that without a lot more experimentation than you probably did. Relax.
I will now stop hectoring people who I haven't spoken to for ten years and whose babies are over five feet tall by now. If I actually wanted to say this to them, I should have done it back when Clinton was still president.
Which, just to be clear, is not what I'd usually do with an iguana.
local Mamas facebook group, and wow are the people neurotic
If I actually wanted to say this to them, I should have done it back when Clinton was still president.
And I should have let her know that I didn't trust her new friend Linda. What's past is past.
Have there been PhD theses related to Grateful Dead lyrics? I wouldn't be shocked.
It's useful to remind oneself from time to time that for 10 million years, mankind lived off carrion on the African savannah.
81: I don't care how many generations of idiots, don't sterilize that way.
It's useful to remind oneself from time to time that for 10 million years, mankind lived off carrion on the African savannah.
I remind myself of this at every meal. Ok, mostly I'm not eating carrion.
86: For a healthy baby, only let it eat what it can catch.
87: Buck v. Bell is one of my favorite cases.
86: http://books.google.com/books?id=wFuE229iBwkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Have there been PhD theses related to Grateful Dead lyrics? I wouldn't be shocked.
Two profs I knew claimed to attempt to work Zappa lyrics into their papers (conference or otherwise).
92: Thanks. I like my Lochner dissent better, but different strokes.
84: I worry that the video is an accurate portrayal of modern mothers. I've already seen some very passionate opinions expressed about co-sleeping, for example.
96: But it's so much fun to bring up the "three generations of imbeciles is enough" quote in any eugenics conversation!
It really is one of the crazier, from our perspective, opinions out there. (For those who don't know, it upheld forced sterilization of the "feeble minded."). Here's the key paragraph:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 , 25 S. Ct. 358, 3 Ann. Cas. 765. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. [274 U.S. 200, 208] But, it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were applied generally, it fails when it is confined to the small number who are in the institutions named and is not applied to the multitudes outside. It is the usual last resort of constitutional arguments to point out shortcomings of this sort. But the answer is that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similary situated so far and so fast as its means allow. Of course so far as the operations enable those who otherwise must be kept confined to be returned to the world, and thus open the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached.
Yep. There are few things scarier than a judge with an unexamined faith in science he doesn't understand.
Eugenics would probably work:
It is just morally repugnant.
102: Eugenics with respect to traits for which the genetic determination of the traits is well understood might work, but intelligence (high or low) is not generally such a trait. People with Huntington's Disease in their families often choose not to have children: if that's what eugenics means, then sure it works. Saying "eugenics works" is sort of the equivalent of a ticking time bomb torture argument -- it's the sort of thing that could work, sort of, if you stipulate that it does, and then start reasoning about it as if it did work.
I think it was a S.J. Gould essay where I read that the little girl who was sterilized as a result of Buck v. Bell went on to do well in high school, and have a life indicating above average intelligence.
86, 94: I know where that research could be done.
It would be better for all concerned if instead of sterilizing the feeble-minded society coerced mating among the brightest.
The lurkers support Oliver Wendell Holmes in OkCupid question responses.
105: I believe classical eugenicists recommend both.
107: They tended in practice to think of wealth and whiteness as the desired quality to breed for, rather than intelligence exactly.
107: Really? I thought I was joking.
but intelligence (high or low) is not generally such a trait
Cue Shearer in 5, 4, 3...
Cue Shearer in 5, 4, 3...
I think we're safe as long as no one is commenting repeatedly in front of a mirror.
I'm getting my information mostly from the link in 102.
And you probably could breed people for intelligence, and have some effect. But you couldn't do it without the sort of control you have over show animals for multiple generations, which isn't practical. Sterilizing arbitrarily selected academically unsuccessful poor people and exhorting upper middle class people to have more kids, which is what 'eugenics' meant in practice, mostly, wouldn't do anything.
Given that hybrid vigor is a well established principle in genetics, I propose forbidding same-race marriage and reproduction. We must strengthen the blood of the volk by diluting it, homeopathy-style!
Sterilizing arbitrarily selected academically unsuccessful poor people and exhorting upper middle class people to have more kids, which is what 'eugenics' meant in practice, mostly, wouldn't do anything.
Well you would have more Womyns Studies majors flipping burgers, for one. Somebody's got to do it, now that all the darkies are gone.
105 -- No, the better solution is enhancing diversity: Replace dating with a variant of X Trap's government by jury selection. 'Good morning, I'm Pat, and I'll be your mate for the next 18 months. But not a day longer.'
103: There was no good evidence to support that the women were feeble minded. Basically, the mother and the grandmother had kids young and out of wedlock and had to live in government housing. As a result, the state considered them to be imbeciles. Even the due process in Buck v. Bell was messed up because the main psychiatrist who testified about the woman being sterilized had never met her in person. The psychiatrist simply read someone else's case notes. (this is all based on memory of a class I took)
Wikipedia has the even more horrifying fact that Carrie Bell became pregnant as a result of being raped: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Buck
It would be better for all concerned if instead of sterilizing the feeble-minded society coerced mating among the brightest.
Of course, since the men will be required to perform such prodigious service, females must be selected for sexual characteristics of a highly stimulating nature.
We cannot allow a Mineshaft gap.
We cannot allow a Mineshaft gap.
Stay away from my precious bodily fluids, you hussy!
As long as you're not avoiding me, I suppose I don't mind if you deny me your essence.
Of course, since the men will be required to perform such prodigious service, females must be selected for sexual characteristics of a highly stimulating nature.
Not going to be a factor: the sperm of the top males will be too valuable for anything other than artificial insemination.
If they are too tired to produce, a little electrical stimulation will do the trick.
It always comes back to the Drones, doesn't it?
I don't know how I lost the comment I was writing when I had to stop with a clearly articulated bathroom need from Mara, but "attachment" parenting a 3-year-old who's been with us two weeks is definitely exhausting us. And I don't read any of the adoption books about how all I have to do is love her and she'll speak and behave totally normally. Insteady I put up with having a huge drool patch on my leg now (though she's getting so much better on that front as her language improves!) and getting up if she cries in the night so she can recognize that if she cries, there will be someone to comfort her. And lo, after ten days of that she's realized that she doesn't need to cry, just wander into our room and we'll wake up and care for her. I feel so incredibly fortunate that for the most part she's clear about what she needs in terms of holding and that she can accept comfort, which some kids who've had a lot of loss in their lives learn to reject. I don't plan to be up rocking her every night for the rest of her life, but I do believr that right now under the circumstances she's much better served by getting some of the comfort she may not have had as a baby. She's young enough that we can manage caring for her as a baby (she has a teething toy we gave her since chewing soothes her and that's better than eating through her sleeves) when she needs that and a big girl when she's up for that. I don't think we would be meeting her needs if we did otherwise. But goodness, narrating and singing to and cooking for a 3-year-old all day is exhausting even withough the added strain of cuddling and hauling around a sturdy 40-pounder. So yeah, maybe some people adopting can soothe themselves by saying that genetics doesn't matter, but she looks just like her mother and I do believe a lot of her behavior and personality come from her responses to her upbringing. And while we love her completely and think she fits our household amazingly well, I don't think we'll forget what's in the last sentence at all.
125: Like all of us whoever she turns out to be will be a product of all kinds of things that can't ever be untangled. But she sure is lucky to have you and Lee!
You always know the word "Thorn" is coming up when your whole screen gets devoured by a textblock.
I think eugenics will inevitably reappear as memory of naziism fades. it was an idea that happened too early, but tech progress is inevitable.
But goodness, narrating and singing to and cooking for a 3-year-old all day is exhausting even withough the added strain of cuddling and hauling around a sturdy 40-pounder.
It's an exhausting age -- I loved infancy, and then was worn out and testy from one to about four, when they got a little more rational. But they change so fast at this age -- what she needs from you this week will be totally different from what she needs a month or two from now. (And that's not even accounting for all the dislocation she's been through.)
"Thorn, Devourer of Screens" has a certain ring to it.
singing to
Ooh, major parenting warning: be very careful singing to a kid any song that you don't think you could stand to sing over and over again a couple of times a week for years. They don't take long to get attached, and then you've got obligations. There was a bad couple of months when Sally was an infant where I had to sing "Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds," to get her to sleep, and it's just an annoying song.
103
... People with Huntington's Disease in their families often choose not to have children: if that's what eugenics means, ...
I don't know if there is a prenatal test for Huntington's yet but there are tests for many other negative traits and eugenics means aborting those babies.
As for Buck vrs Bell my understanding is that it has not been explicity overruled and that institutionalized feeble minded women are still often prevented from having children (although not by sterilization).
131: Learning some songs can help. As it turned out, I only knew the words to a few Christmas carols, "America the Beautiful," and Amazing Grace.
I suspect I used to use paragraphs more pre-ipad but indeed I don't now. Sorry, yoyo.
And peep, I'm not saying we'll have no influence. I think we've had an impact already. But I'm not saying that it cancels out her early lead exposure or whatever; they're all part of the picture.
132: institutionalized feeble minded women are still often prevented from having children
Sadly, we still haven't figured out a way to release all the feeble minded men from the institution called "the Supreme Court".
131: That's why, if I had a kid, I would only sing "Solidarity Forever," "Joe Hill," "We Shall Overcome", "If You Miss Me At The Back of the Bus", and "Anything Goes".
Years after we sang it during a long car trip, my daughter will hum "Union Maid" when she's concentrating on something.