Item! Children Need Affection!

Thank God for Harvard researchers! Where would I be without this new bit of information? I’m just glad it came before Natasha is born. This way I can properly raise her, unlike the hack job we’ve done on her poor older brother. I would stop locking him in the bathroom when he needs attention but I’m afraid to change parenting strategies with him now that we are already set in our ways. Perhaps someone will fund a study that will help me decide what to do about this quandary.

Seriously, this whole study is ridiculous. First, if you read the actual study, the authors state that they didn’t do their own research. Instead, they make extrapolations based on a seriously limited number of observations of multiple researchers with whom they are not even connected. It’s not that I disagree with the premise. Of course children need attention and touching! Of course they cry for a reason! Of course they need to be held and loved! But if you read the study, there is nothing that proves a one-time 30-minute crying jag will irreparably harm your child, causing him or her to suffer from generalized anxiety disorder in adulthood. Yet, this does nothing to calm down the attachment parenting zealots when arguing their case that your child, under no circumstances, should ever be allowed to be unhappy and should always be directly physically attached to your body, every coo and whimper immediately attended to. Among other apparent rules you must abide by to be part of the cool AP club:

· You must use cloth diapers, preferable ones woven by you. Out of hemp. That you grew organically in your own garden.
· Said cloth diapers must be washed in some sort of organic compound so as not to upset baby’s delicate skin.
· You must own at least 3 types of baby slings. Again, hemp is the ideal material. Extra points if you make your own. Extra extra points if you own one from each Asian country. Try some of these:
http://www.nurturedfamily.com/babycarriers.aspx
http://www.earthbaby.com/newnative.html
http://www.mayawrap.com/
http://store.peppermint.com/baby-slings-by-name.html
· You must not, under any circumstances, ever let a drop of formula touch the lips of your child. If someone says formula is ok to use, you must use the argument “Formula is not natural. You do not see animals in the wild eating formula”. (This argument of course, neglects the fact that infants of wild animals who could not, for whatever reason, eat their mother’s breast milk would die in the wild).
· Dr. Sears is your God.
· Make your own baby food.
· Do not own a television set.
· Co-sleep until your child is….eh, old enough to reproduce on his or her own.
· If you must choose between eating your first meal in 20 hours and actually putting your fussy infant in a swing to be happy alone for 3 minutes or holding your child, choose the latter. Or you are a bad mommy.
· Your child may never have any refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, or other additives. Seriously. Not even when his or her digestive system is mature enough to handle it in small quantities.
· If you see any parent not following the above rules, you must immediately feel superior to him or her. If their infant is crying, you must assume it is because they do not follow the rules listed above rather than the fact that sometimes…you know…babies cry!

Now that I got all of that off of my chest, I can say that I am happy there is a backlash movement against the parenting trends invoked by crazies like Dr. Spock and the infamous Gary Enzzo. But seriously, to make a movement out of it and attach yourself to this movement and identify yourself as a follower of it seems not only unhelpful to me, but at times, downright dangerous. The most deleterious effect is that it causes moms to not support other moms’ decisions. Without taking into consideration the circumstances behind their decisions.

But all this AP stuff is certainly good for one thing: Call your product “AP friendly” or advertise it in AP circles and you can charge an arm and a leg for it. Get it endorsed by Dr. Sears and you can increase your profit margin by at least tenfold.

The funny thing is, I don’t think parenting styles have changed dramatically with all the research being done or have been deeply affected by which parenting books are most popular. I used to crawl into bed all the time with my parents when I was a toddler and my mom let me get away with it. She didn’t call it “co-sleeping”, though. I was just “sleeping in her bed”.

If I sound a bit jaded and a touch bitter, it’s because I did everything I could to try to make Adam a happy baby. I swore that he wasn’t when he was still a little baby. He was very high needs and demanded to be held ALL OF THE TIME. So I did. But I didn’t love every minute of it and I felt bad for that. You know, sometimes I wanted to put him down and use the bathroom or take a shower. So he did end up sitting in front of Baby Einstein in a swing. But when I look at him now and I think back to his infancy….he was, and most definitely is, an extremely happy and well-adjusted little guy. We used some of the products dubbed "AP", primarily out of desperation. We'll use them on Natasha, too (the hammock, a sling), but I'm not joining a club. I'm not calling myself "AP". If she cries, it doesn't mean I'm unfit, if she has formula, she'll probably still be very healthy. And foremostly, if I see another mother abiding by a rule that is not my own or isn't AP, I'm not going to judge her for it.

I hope we do as good a job with Natasha as we did with Adam. I just need to remember not to read too much Harvard Research.