Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child [Paperback]

Katie Allison Granju (Author), Betsy Kennedy (Author), William Sears (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 1, 1999

Grow a secure attachment with your children by listening to your heart

Popularized by bestselling pediatrician Dr. William Sears, "attachment parenting" encourages mothers and fathers to fully accept their babies' dependency needs. According to the growing numbers of attachment parenting advocates, consistent parental responsiveness to these needs leads to happy and emotionally well-balanced children.

This practical, comprehensive, and first-ever guide to today's most talked-about nurturing style, Attachment Parenting shows how some conventional childrearing advice can be detrimental, and urges you to trust your instincts on such important matters as:

• Responding attentively to your baby's cries

• Minimizing parent-child separation

• Avoiding "sleep training" for infants

• Breastfeeding according to your baby's cues instead of a schedule

• "Wearing" your baby in a cloth carrier rather than relying on "baby gadgets" such as plastic carriers and carriages.

In addition to expert advice from pediatricians, lactation consultants, and anthropologists -- as well as words of wisdom from hundreds of real parents -- Attachment Parenting includes an exhaustive list of print, Internet, and support-group resources. It's an indispensable, hands-on reference that allows you to confidently and joyfully develop a secure and loving bond with your young children.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Attachment to and dependency on parents... is a normal, healthy aspect of childhood and not something that needs to be discouraged." This quote from Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child sums up the attitude behind the growing shift in many Western cultures toward a labor-intensive but arguably more rewarding, effective, and "natural" way to raise children. This philosophy, termed "Attachment Parenting" by its champion, pediatrician and father of eight Dr. William Sears (author of the popular child-care manual The Baby Book, among others), sees infants not as manipulative adversaries who must be "trained" to eat, sleep, and play when told, but as dependent yet autonomous human beings whose wants and needs are intelligible to the parent willing to listen, and who deserve to be responded to in a reasonable and sensitive manner. As with Sears's books, there are no plans or schedules here, no specific prescriptions for what to do with your child. Techniques to facilitate connection and communication are outlined, but mostly the book is an exhortation to listen and to trust yourself, and to trust your child's ability to convey to you what he or she needs.

Information is provided in a well-organized format that parents will find useful. Common questions regarding some of Attachment Parenting's less orthodox tenets are answered, and each section of the book provides lengthy reading and resource lists, Web sites, and e-mail addresses. This book also provides a fairly broad discussion of how working parents can incorporate such a "high-touch" style of care into their busy schedules. The authors are sometimes painfully straightforward about the cost-benefit analysis parents must go through when deciding to work outside the home, but they do not patronize working parents by glossing over this difficult decision. They show how Attachment Parenting can be especially beneficial to these families and give advice on choosing child care, breastfeeding after returning to work, and the techniques for creating a breastfeeding-friendly workplace.

Given the overwhelming cultural paradigms that parents must resist if they are going to adopt this compassionate methodology, the book's sometimes defensive tone can be at least partially excused. As a whole, parents will find this a good overview of some compelling arguments for Attachment Parenting and a wonderful resource for delving deeper into the issues it addresses. How much of it they choose to integrate into their lives is, as the book emphasizes, their decision to make, with their baby. --Katherine Ferguson

From Library Journal

Drawing on the literature of Dr. William Sears, who provides the book's introduction, Granju (with the help of Kennedy, R.N., M.S.N.) offers a mother's insight into the concept of attachment parenting. Rather than the typical child care approach that provides a list of generic "do's and don'ts" during certain phases in a baby's development, the attachment theory posits that parents know their child better than so-called experts. Granju examines breast feeding, baby wearing, and the family bed as natural concepts conducive to raising healthy children. She relates numerous experiences of mothers pulled from Internet listservs. Patrons may be well served by using these addresses to engage in their own Internet discourse, but, unfortunately, these rather flat anecdotes, along with extensive lists of attachment parenting resources, comprise the bulk of the book. Attachment Parenting adds nothing that Sears hasn't already covered in more detail in his many respected and groundbreaking works. Purchase for public libraries where demand warrants.ALisa Powell Williams, Moline Southeast Lib., IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books; Original edition (August 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067102762X
• ISBN-13: 978-0671027629
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (128 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #88,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book November 21, 1999

By Janet Marshall

Format:Paperback

Not sure where the previous reviewer is coming from. I've read all the Sears books AND the Meredith Small book (all excellent , no doubt about that) and this new book is an important addition to the attachment parenting literature. It is chock full of information that I've never sen or read ANYWHERE else. I am an experienced parent of two and I found myself taking notes and highlighting sections of this book to show other parents. A few examples are the scientific info on natural ages of weaning from anthrpologist Dettwyler, the strong info on the risks of uneccesary bottle-feeding, the unequivocal condemnation of cry-it-out sleep training, the incredible resource lists, the side-by-side comparison of slings, backpacks and snugli/frontpack-style carriers, the info on breastfeeding and working outside the home... I could go on and on.

This is a GREAT book. Read all the reviews :-) And you won't be sorry if you buy a copy for yourself or a friend.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars attachment parenting December 2, 2002

By 4kidsMommee

Format:Paperback

I consider myself an "attachment parent" by most standards (although I prefer not to use the term to describe myself) and can relate to the annoying remarks that I was "spoiling" my twins, only making things "harder" for myself, and "need to put them on a schedule". For me it made sense to feed my babies on demand when they were hungry instead of forcing them to be on a "schedule", and co-sleeping allowed my husband and I to care for and stay close to our babies during the night until we feel they are ready to sleep away from us. I commend the author for writing this book and challenging the "norms" of our society, even though most parents and pediatricians don't feel there is a problem or harm in bottlefeeding or putting a newborn in a crib in a separate room/nursery. After careful thought, I changed my previous review and decided to rate this book 3 out of 5 because at times the author did take on a very preachy, defensive, and even slightly radical tone in some of her arguments that came across as a turn off and didn't take into consideration challenging or unexpected circumstances. I feel that taking a more objective approach in marketing attachment parenting to expecting & new parents who are trying to learn more about it could have toned down the "preachy" nature I and a few other reviewers felt was evident in this book; but that's my opinion. Ultimately, my suggestion is that you use this book as a reference and take what you need from it like any other book in your home library. You don't have to agree with the author 100%, but use the advice to follow *your instincts* as a parent.

76 of 86 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Attachment Parenting is a wonderful way of life September 22, 2000

By Patricia Mejia Burke VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I wish every expectant parent would read Katie's book. I can't remember how old our son was when we discovered that there was a name for the method of parenting that my husband and I had adopted. We just "knew" not to let him cry himself to sleep, to share sleep with him, to let him breastfeed as he needed to, to hold him and wear him and love him 24 hours a day.

And then I discovered Katie's book and she reinforced all of our instincts! Whenever I have doubts (sometimes put upon me by society), all I have to do is re-read certain chapters or pages and it all comes clear to me again: my husband and I are the experts when it comes to our son. We should and will follow our instincts.

Yes, before reading this book, we had all the mainstream purchases: crib, swing, baby bucket, baby bouncer seat, stroller. And we did use those items a few times, but not to the extreme that we've seen other parents, leaving baby alone for long periods of time. Our son has grown into a happy and healthy toddler and we owe a lot of it to being so Attached!