I’ve been following a conversation about parenting styles on Our Life Upstate. As people commented on a post, the discussion turned to a discussion of attachment parenting v. non-attachment parenting. As a result, Upstatemomof3 wrote a second post in which she articulated her parenting style and declared herself semi-attached. When I read this I initially really liked the term because it allows for grey area.
After further conversation in the comments on that post, another commenter told me that I shouldn’t be offended if people call me anti-attachment parenting since I have openly said that we don’t practice everything associated with attachment parenting. I did say that, but they key there was that we don’t practice everything associated with AP. This made we start to think about how many things you have to do before you are considered a full member of a certain parenting style.
Adding “semi” on the surface says, you can’t criticize me as not following the rules because I didn’t claim to be 100% on board. But that goes against what Attachment Parenting is really about. Dr. Sears notes that:
It’s actually the style that many parents use instinctively. Parenting is too individual and baby too complex for there to be only one way.
But so many attachment parents forget that and make it about rules. And that means that Upstatemomof3, myself , and others add semi to the label. It becomes about checkmarks and not about being responsive to what is best for your own family and child. Does not co-sleeping automatically mean that the baby is made to CIO alone in another room? No. Does it mean that a baby in daycare can’t be parented in this way? No. Does it mean someone who uses bottles can’t be considered attachment parenting? No.
My resistance to label myself as an attachment parent is that like lots of other labels, AP comes with a ton of tangential ideologies that people lump in. When I say attachment parenting to parents on other message boards, they assume that I mean that we don’t vaccinate Capone, I am a stay at home mom, we are planning on homeschooling, etc. In reality none of these things are rules of attachment parenting. That doesn’t mean that they are wrong or that they aren’t good parenting choices, but they aren’t the rules.
Likewise, when I talk about daycare with other AP families, many instantly assume that Capone is left by himself, is not held, is not breastfed, is held to a schedule, etc. We’re labeled as at best part-time AP and at worst anti-AP. Either way we can’t win.
This is the problem with labels. As soon as a label is applied, it becomes about rules. How many checkmarks does one have to have to be considered an AP? What can you skip and still be considered to fit the parenting style? If we co-slept and I worked would we be AP? If I didn’t work, but Capone still slept in a crib, would we be AP?
I chose to use the label AP because it most closely describes the philosophy we believe in: responsive parenting. I need that label because it helps me identify other similar parents. I don’t think that people who have more checkmarks are more evolved or are better (attachment) parents. That’s not the goal. The goal is to think about your choices and know why you are making those choices. I can defend my choice to work and I can defend our healthcare choices and both fall in line with AP as defined by Dr. Sears.
But labels on the internet get used by activists and people who pretend that there is only one correct way. Maybe they live in a more clear cut world, but we exist in the grey. As much as I love the choices that we’ve made, we didn’t make them because we thought they were the only way to do something or because we’re operating from a checklist. We researched and we decided what is best for us. What we ended up with looked a lot like AP and when I see Upstatemomof3 say she’s semi-AP, I see that explanation as responsive to her family and her families needs, which makes her a responsive and responsible parent. That is the spirit of Attachment Parenting.
