Quotes & Sayings About Attachment Parenting

Attachment parenting demands not just certain actions you take with your baby but also certain emotional states to accompany those actions. — Hanna Rosin

Attachment parenting, Sears writes, "immunizes children against many of the social and emotional diseases which plague our society," producing children who are "compassionate," "caring," "admirable," "affectionate," "confident," and "accomplished" ("faster than a speeding bullet," "more powerful than a locomotive," and "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" seem to have been left off the list!). — Emily Matchar

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

Attachments that are not fostered may lend to the child's inability to properly attach or have no attachment at all. — Asa Don Brown

Shamefully, human beings are the only mammals to separate mothers from their infants. Dr. John Krystal,
Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology at the Yale School
of Medicine, described the impact of maternal separation on
the infant as 'profound', citing the recent discovery that the
autonomic activity (heart rate and other involuntary nervous
system activity) of two-day-old sleeping babies is 176 per
cent higher during maternal separation. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Traumatic experiences in early childhood may interfere with the child's ability to securely attach. — Asa Don Brown

And the end of this paradox is that only when the child is thus free can he have the proper attachment to his parents; only when we allow his independence can he then freely offer us love and respect, without conflict and without resentment. It is the hardest lesson to learn that the goal of parenthood is not to reign forever but to abdicate gracefully at the right time. — Sydney J. Harris

There are two philosophies when it comes to getting young children to sleep. There is 'sleep training,' which basically involves putting your kids to bed and listening to them scream all night; or there is 'attachment parenting,' which essentially involves lying down with your kids, cuddling them, and then listening to them scream all night. — Jim Gaffigan

Today, for most kids in the United States and Canada, kids' primary attachment is to other kids. "For the first time in history," Neufeld observes, "young people are turning for instruction, modeling, and guidance not to mothers, fathers, teachers, and other responsible adults but to people whom nature never intended to place in a parenting role - their own peers. . — Leonard Sax

I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting, which is a style of parenting that ... basically, the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so. — Mayim Bialik

Whether you call it Attachment Parenting, natural parenting, or simple maternal instincts, this false "return" to traditional parenting is just a more explicit and deliberate version of the often unnamed parenting gender divide. Whether you're wearing you baby or not, whether you're using cloth diapers or teaching your four-week-old to use the toilet; it's still women who are doing the bulk of child care, no matter what the parenting philosophy. Putting a fancy name to the fact that we're still doing all the goddamn work doesn't make it any less sexist or unfair — Jessica Valenti

Increased responsibility for babies and young children has proved just as restrictive, if not more so, than sexism in the home or in the workplace. — Elisabeth Badinter

In between every action and reaction, there is a space. Usually the space is extremely small because we react so quickly, but take notice of that space and expand it. Be aware in that space that you have a choice to make. You can choose how to respond, and choose wisely, because the next step you take will teach your child how to handle anger and could either strengthen or damage your relationship. — Rebecca Eanes

When you've had one call after another and your little one is tugging on your shirt, remember what really matters. When the milk is splattered all over the floor and those little eyes are looking at you for your reaction, remember what really matters. It takes 5 minutes to clean up spilled milk; it takes much longer to clean up a broken spirit. — Rebecca Eanes

Avoiding awareness of our own reality is often an attempt to deny thoughts, desires, or intentions that we feel will threaten or contradict the needs of those with whom we feel strong attachment. We instinctively hide feelings and thoughts we assume would be threatening to other people, and might cause them to leave us. . . People who learned early in life to adapt to parental needs to an extent that we were unable to focus on our own developmental tasks and needs will often continue to play out this working mode" of conditional attachment. "You will attach to me as long as I meet your needs. — Mary Crocker Cook

Attachment parenting is this theory that if you wear your baby around and you sleep with your baby and you breast-feed for a long time, the baby will be more attached to you. — Sarah Ruhl

The one to whom nothing was refused, whose tears were always wiped away by an anxious mother, will not abide being offended.
- De Ira 2.21.6 — Seneca.

I had uncovered a widely held but overlooked attachment: our attachment to the view that every problem must have a solution. We delude ourselves that we can think our way out of a problem or we see it as a matter of finding the right person to advise us. We become beggars for our problems, asking numerous people for an opinion. So often, we refuse to relax until a problem is fixed, only to discover our inability to relax was most of the problem. — Sarah Napthali

young children, who for whatever reason are deprived of the continuous care and attention of a mother or a substitute-mother, are not only temporarily disturbed by such deprivation, but may in some cases suffer long-term effects which persist
Bowlby, J., Ainsworth, M., Boston, M., and Rosenbluth, D. (1956). The effects of mother-child separation: A follow-up study. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 29, 211-249. — John Bowlby

The greatest challenge of parenting is in the inner work it requires: the strength and confidence in believing that we are not in control of, but the answer for our children. — Kelly Bartlett

My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house. — Alanis Morissette

To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think. — Andrew Solomon

Since Jeannie is a big believer in attachment parenting and I'm a spineless coward, we have instituted an open-door policy, meaning if one of our kids has a nightmare, they are welcome to come in our room and pee in our bed. Luckily this only happens every night. — Jim Gaffigan

Throughout history, the most brutal cultures have always been distinguished by maternal-infant separation. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Attachment parenting is not a passive parenting style. — Mayim Bialik

There are many different ways of approaching parenting as there are cultures. However, in non-industrialized cultures, the similarities are also striking. Extended nursing, co-sleeping, carrying the baby in close physical contact, responding promptly to cries or distress, never leaving a baby alone, are all virtually universal in traditional societies that have not become overly "westernized". — Ingrid Bauer

I have a neuroscience background - that's what my doctorate is in - and I was trained to study hormones of attachment, so I definitely feel my parenting is informed by that. — Mayim Bialik

What would it be like to feel so attached, so intrinsically bonded, so protective of one's own best connection with time and the ages, of generations past and future, of another human life, of their time? — J.R. Tompkins

The word on the street was that I had two options when it came to caring for my future baby: I could either eat, sleep, drink, bathe, walk, and work with my baby permanently affixed to my body until the two of us meld into one, or I could leave my baby out naked on a cold millstone to cry, refusing to hold or feed her until the schedule allowed. Apparently, there was no in between. — Rachel Held Evans

The key to activating maturation is to take care of the attachment needs of the child. To foster independance we must first invite dependance; to promote individuation we must provide a sense of belonging and unity; to help the child separate we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer one than he is giving us. We liberate children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness. — Gordon Neufeld

Attachment parenting is at once conscious and instinctive parenting that focuses on respecting the importance of the parent-child attachment. It also recognises the necessity for secure attachment in growing compassionate, confident and peaceful human beings. Along with this, it acknowledges that mothers are truly important, not simply replaceable with products and procedures. Mothers matter, and that shouldn't mean they should lose agency in the process of becoming mothers who matter. — Chrissy Chittenden