Chapter Four

CHAPTER IV

Discussion and Conclusion

Summary

     Attachment disorders of all degrees are a significant and growing feature of our society. These disorders are not only damaging individual children, who are unable to establish legitimate relationships with others, but also society at large. Disorders of attachment have been linked to various socially unacceptable, sometimes violent, behaviors and numerous forms of psychopathology. If not recognized and addressed in young children, attachment disorders are difficult to treat without intensive family-based reprogramming. Since early maladaptive and aggressive behavior has been related to anxious and disorganized attachment patterns, it seems logical that promoting secure attachment relationships needs to become a cultural priority. Early intervention and primary prevention are key. Our culture can no longer afford to ignore this problem or to focus on the treating these devastating disorders only when the behavior becomes criminal. It is high time schools address the parenting and child care practices that cause attachment disorders. Educational programs designed to decrease the intergenerational transmission of ineffective and abusive parenting behaviors are long overdue.
     Parenting behaviors that increase the likelihood of responsive, sensitive reactions to the cues and signals of babies need to be taught to the next generation of parents. Research supports the assertion that responsive parenting behaviors is essential in establishing secure parent-child attachment relationship. The attachment parenting style of parenting is based upon responsive parenting. Breastfeeding, cosleeping, and babywearing, hallmark practices within this style, are each attachment-promoting parenting behaviors. However, one needs to be aware that a shift toward teaching these behaviors could lead to resistance due to contemporary cultural norms. Commercially-inspired trends towards carrying babies in plastic car seats and strollers, rather than in arms, and providing babies with cow's milk formulas from plastic nipples, rather than holding the children close and nursing them, need to be seriously reevaluated in light of attachment theory and the emotional and physical best interests of babies.
     Attachment parenting embraces a natural and intuitive style of parenting, with specific parenting behaviors which anthropological evidence suggests as the normative human pattern and the benefits of which are increasingly supported by medical and scientific research. Each of the hallmark attachment parenting behaviors is well supported as being in the best interest of raising physically and emotionally healthy children. Breastfeeding is by far the best way to feed and nurture a baby. The list of established health benefits continuously increases as further medical research is completed. The fulfillment of the attachment behaviors of rooting and sucking and the extensive physical touch which is intrinsic to nursing on demand have obvious rewards with regards the development of secure mother-child relationships. The biologically responsive nature of breastfeeding combined with the attachment parenting attitude encouraging feeding on cue and unrestricted night nursing creates a solid beginning for the mother-child relationship. Cosleeping, the nonreactive type preferred by attachment parents, has been observed in virtually all non-Western cultures and has benefits for the breastfeeding relationship and very likely has the effect of decreasing SIDS risks among babies. Cosleeping allows for the easy continuation of responsive parenting throughout the night. Babywearing has explicitly been shown to increase responsive and sensitive parenting. Research shows that carried babies cry less and babies who are worn often in a cloth carrier are far more likely to be securely attached to their mothers than their peers who are hauled about in plastic car seats. Each of these simple parenting behaviors activates and enforces the skills necessary for responsive and sensitive parenting.

Implications for Educators

It is the responsibility of education professionals to realize that we not only influence the lives of our students through what we teach, but that we have the opportunity to help them become better future parents. When parenting education even makes the curriculum in today's busy schools, much of what is currently taught to adolescents with regard to parenting and child care is based only on a developmental approach and is the product of cultural norms influenced by past baby experts teaching a detached style of parenting. Formula feeding is taught as being almost as good as breastfeeding when scientifically this is hardly the case. Parenting behaviors such as "ferberizing" or the "cry it out method" are still cultural norms which are not criticized and cosleeping is often ignored or strongly rejected. The need for safety is often taught, but the equally important need for human touch may not make the curriculum. It is time for change. All secondary level students should be taught developmentally appropriate responsive parenting skills. Meanwhile, programs for expectant and parenting teens should move beyond crisis management and realize that teaching the standard repertoire of parenting behaviors places these children at additional risk for attachment disorders. Additionally, all parenting education curricula need to be reassessed with an eye toward the advantages of teaching behaviors such breastfeeding on cue, babywearing, and cosleeping, which explicitly support secure parent-child attachment behaviors.

Recommendations for Further Research

Although research supports claims that breastfeeding, cosleeping, and babywearing all promote parent-child attachment, there has to date been no published research on the attachment parenting style as a whole. Future research on various parenting styles is needed. Specific research comparing attachment status within families that practice attachment parenting, to those that follow the non-responsive, highly scheduled style of parenting, known as the "Ezzo" method (Auerbach, 1998), and a control group, which uses neither style, would be ideal. Further research on the physical and emotional benefits of nonreactive cosleeping and Western babywearing would also be welcome additions to this field of knowledge. Additionally, studies to validate the effectiveness of educational primary prevention programs with regards to increasing future parental responsiveness and decreasing subsequent rates of attachment disorders would be beneficial.

Conclusion

The attachment parenting style holds a great deal of promise for producing emotionally secure children. In a time when our culture seems to be facing a crisis of violence among our youth it seems imperative that we do more than simply wonder as to the cause of this problem. Instead we need to be willing to question our cultural parenting norms and the values which underlie this crisis. We need to be willing to look beyond the techniques and the child care methods which have been used for the past few generations and instead embrace a more time-honored and natural style of parenting, one where dependence of a baby on its parents is accepted because the parents trust that their children will grow up to become securely independent in their own time. This style of parenting, dubbed "attachment parenting" as it has become popular in the United States in the the last two decades, is actually the normative pattern of human parenting. Whether one is a humanist or a religious person, it is absurd to argue that the manner of child care a baby receives is irrelevant or that responsive care is not important. Human babies are explicitly designed to be cared for by their parents in a consistent and sensitive manner. Unfortunately, parenting behavior is not inborn, it must be taught. When a culture collectively abandons the mode of care that serves its babies best, that culture will continue to pay a price until it acknowledges its dire mistake and corrects its ways. The instruction of tomorrow's parents about the importance of parent-child attachment and about specific parenting behaviors that promote secure attachments has the potential of being a vital part of the beginning of this acknowledgement process.

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