attachment parenting
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| Mon, 08-14-2006 - 3:17pm |
A woman I know (I used to work with her dh) practices "attachment parenting". Here is a definition (for those who don't know what it is):
"Attachment Parenting includes respecting your child's needs, feeding on demand, and answering your baby's cries. Other parts of Attachment Parenting include co-sleeping, nursing on demand, sling or other baby carrier wearing, and cloth diapering. Not all Attachment Parents practice all of the above, but never the less love the idea of Attachment Parenting and comforting their children.
Attachment parenting uses mild discipline methods and avoids all physical or emotional punishment, such as inflicting shame on a child for inappropriate behavior. Children are encouraged and allowed to sleep with their parents, and you treat your bed as the family bed. Meeting your child's needs according to the child's time frame during the early years of development is an essential part of attachment parenting. Children will be allowed to grow and learn at their own pace and not according to standard time frames."
What do you all think of attachment parenting?
I don't see attachment parenting as something a WOH parent could do, or could they? What do u think?
I am also curious to see if SAHPs vs/ WOHPs will have different opionions on this topic.
If anyone here practices attachment parenting - was your decision to do so closely linked with your decision to be a SAHP?
josee

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Youve got to be kidding me? Right? This is a joke?
You actually think theres some big conspiracy in the canadian government to keep mom's at home???? That is the most ignorant, uninformed statement you have made here.
Show me proof! You love to cite research so much, and base all your decisions on that. Show me proof! Besides the fact that we have an *optional* 1 year paid maternity leave.
I know a lot of moms who went back to work after that year, and canadian companies are required to give you your job back. They cannot fire you.
Or are you just jealous of our system?
"Our attitudes about things make a difference. A society that will pay women not to work once they have kids has a strong attitude about WM's. That will translate into how they treat and view WM's and how WM's feel about themselves."
Find me a canadian woman, a working mom, on this board who thinks they are an oppressed working person who is pressured into staying at home.
Please! You know nothing of what goes on here. the canadian government recognizes that women want, for the most part, to stay home with their child. And given the opportunity to stay home 1 year allows them to BF for that long, instead of having to worry about pumping at work constantly or switching to formula.
Unless you have lived here and dealt with our government you cannot assume that is how life is like here.
"There is no inherent relationship between providing a certain amount of parental leave and considering it a bad thing that mothers work. Canada, in any case, does not "pay moms not to work". It provides a specified amount of parental leave (offered equally to both men and women, if I recall correctly)."
Yes it does. I do not know the specifics off hand but the parental leave has been changed over the past 10 years. Now the father can request a leave as well, if he so wishes to stay home for a time.
I do not see our government as anti WM, but pro family. And not everyone qualifies for leave. I am on contract, so I do not qualify. If the mom only worked for a few months somewhere (not sure about the amount of time either) before they left on maternity leave, I do not think they qualify, at least they wont get as much if they worked there longer.
I grew up in a housing project too. Not all of them are bad. Is that what you are claiming?"
I don't claim to be an expert on all housing projects. The one I grew up in was beyond bad.
"Can you pick a claim and stick to it? First it was a majority of mothers in NYC ghettos are drug users. Wait, not a majority, but many. Wait, it's a majority of the mothers that you've seen (whatever your universe might be). Which one of these claims is the one you're making now?"
Many of the mothers that I deal with are drug users. The majority of the ones from those neighborhoods are.
"Are some of your best friends black?"
??? Relevance.
"I've lived and worked among a group of diverse people all of my life."
"And? Do you imagine this makes you unique?"
No, but when someone implies that you are a racist, I am showing that I have lived and worked successfully with many people from many different backgrounds.
"So is Howard Beach."
I guess you included Howard Beach to show that whites do drugs also. Which I *never* stated that white people never do drugs. They also have a high concentration of organized crime.
"So are many LI suburbs."
And again, what is the ethnic make-up of those areas? Wyandanch, Roosevelt, Hempstead? Or am I making that up again?
Hmmm? Let's see. Look through history and time and time again, you'll see that later research reveals that a result found in earlier research was due to some characteristic they didn't control for, I'm suggesting that a society's attitude towards WM's may be such a characteristic. Hence, I take more to heart research done in societies that mirror my own's attitude about WM's. My country has not declared being a WM so bad that the government will pay us not to do it.
IMO, how a society views and treats WM's matters WRT what you'd see in data. If WM's are not supported or made to feel less of mothers or only the desperate become WM's because society has declared it so bad they'll pay you not to do it, I don't think you'd see the same results you'd see in a society that accepts either SAH or WOH as valid forms of parenting. I haven't had society declare my choice so bad they'll pay me not to do it. I think that colors my beliefs about myself and my own abilities and I think it impacts how I interact with my children which could influence results.
I would love to see a comparison of longitudinal studies comparing countries that do declare WM's bad by paying women not to do it and those who do not make such a declaration. I think it's something that researchers should be controlling for or, at least, looking at to see if it really does make a difference. In the meantime, I'll take data coming out of the likes of Canada or the UK with a grain of salt because those societies are not like mine. Mine respects my choice, at least enough not to pay me not to make it.
I'm sorry, but nothing you have said in this post is even remotely related to how scientific research is conducted. You seem to have entirely missed the point that the so-called "Canadian Study" may well have been conducted by a Chinese researcher funded by a U.S. granting agency working in a Canadian lab. I don't know if that is true in this particular case, but the reality is that scientific research is generally internationally funded and executed.
Also, why are you continuing to mix up the concept of parental leave with "paying mothers not to work"? If a country offers the same parental leave benefits to a father that it does to a mother does that mean that government is telling fathers that they shouldn't work and doesn't consider WOH to be a valid choice for a father?
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