For the training to become a Postpartum Doula I have been reading The Attachment Parenting Book, it’s a really great book with some ideas that, I have to admit, are antithetical to many of the things I have heard as sage advice growing up. The practices and approach that many people take to rasing children, in an attempt to raise independent, think-for-yourselfers, is what I have been mostly exposed to before reading The AP Book. “Let the child cry, don’t intervene, he will learn to self-soothe” is the biggest one that crosses my mind at the moment, but this book makes a compelling argument to the contrary, and actually seems to take a lot of the guilt from, after reading this, what seems to be a kind of detached parenting. It takes away the fear of ‘over-parenting.’ Things like, “Don’t hold the baby too much, you’ll spoil him.” The AP Book encourages parents to follow their babies cues and their own instincts when it comes to raising a child, and attempts to convince the reader that THEY are in fact the expert when it comes to their own child, and not the check out lady in the grocery store that saw the latest episode of Dr. Phil.
With all that said, researchers have found that adults that have been raised by attached parents, and not attached parents, turn out very differently. One of the words they use to describe children that were not raised in this way was untrusting. And that struck a chord… not severe or debilitating distrusting. But I have a circle of people I trust (a circle of trust, if you will), and the rest… I just kind of trust. My parents were semi-attached parents, and I turned out pretty great. But as for me, when I have a baby, I do believe I will be holding that baby, a lot, with NO fear of spoiling them.
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