Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about our experiences with attachment parenting. In response my last post, Emily asked this excellent question:
So: how does attachment parenting affect your marriage? As opposed to non-attachment parenting, I mean? I know you and Ben have only ever practiced AP so you can’t compare from experience but I’d be curious to hear what you think are the unique effects of AP on your marriage.
I have to wonder if AP might take more of a toll on the relationship between husband and wife. Do you think it allows for less (or just different?) involvement from Ben? Attachment parenting, at least for the first year or two of life, seems so intensely the mom’s job, and less of a shared duty as it might be if a baby were bottle-fed, for example. Thoughts?
So here are some of my thoughts.
First off, I’ll just outline attachment parenting so we’re on the same page.
Defining Attachment Parenting
I love the way attachmentparengting.org defines AP, as focused on raising children “with a highly developed capacity for empathy and connection” by “eliminating violence as a means for raising children.” Its essence is about “forming and nurturing strong connections between parents and their children” and “treating our children with kindness, respect and dignity.”
I would personally define attachment parenting as a high-touch, highly-responsive approach to parenting, which encourages children to express their needs and parents to respect and respond to those articulations.
The opposite of attachment parenting, roughly, would include any kind of parent-led/Babywise approach, involving sleep-training, the cry-it-out method, scheduled feedings, et cetera. (Wikipedia defines the Babywise approach as “parental control of the infant’s sleep, play and feeding schedule rather than allowing the baby to decide when to eat, play and sleep.”)
I like Dr. Sears’ “Seven B’s of Attachment Parenting,” because it’s a simple way to outline some of the main features of attachment parenting:
- Birth Bonding
- Belief in Baby’s Cries
- Breastfeeding
- Babywearing
- Bedding close to baby
- Beware of baby trainers
- Balance
How This Looks in Our Marriage
One of the first things I want to point out is that the only thing on Dr. Sears’ list that my husband can’t directly participate in is breastfeeding. He also doesn’t wear Lydia, because he thinks all my carriers look too “feminine” (lame), but he does hold and carry her a lot instead.
He was there to bond with her as soon as she was born; he tries to respond quickly to her cries, trusting that they mean something; he shares the bed with both of us; and he’s just as wary as I am of baby-training.
It’s true that overall, caring for her has been primarily my domain. But caring for her in this way feels almost as easy as breathing. I just take her with me everywhere I go. I cuddle her when she cries and feed her when she seems hungry. Simple. There are no rules or schedules to follow.
I can hardly call breastfeeding work, unless you call holding a baby on my lap while browsing Pinterest, or rolling over in bed to offer her my breast in the middle of the night, work.
I do spend more time with her than Ben does, but this is mostly because I stay home with her while he works. When he’s home, he takes care of her just as much as I do, holding her and singing to her and playing with her so I can obsessively read my YA fantasy novels get important work done.
How does attachment parenting affect your marriage?
Honestly, I think AP — as opposed to another style of parenting – has been beneficial to our marriage, mostly because it makes our lives so much easier and less stressful.
We don’t have the added strain of trying to train her to be a “good” sleeper or eater; we assume she does these things appropriately by nature. Time and energy that we would otherwise devote to things like sleep-training, we can devote to conversation and leisure activities.
Because we share a bed with her (and I breastfeed), nighttime care is a cinch and we all get plenty of sleep. I haven’t felt sleep-deprived since she was about a month old. No one is fumbling around in the kitchen preparing bottles in the middle of the night. Well-rested husbands and wives are much more pleasant with to live with and easier to get along with than sleep-deprived ones.
Because we carry and hold her a lot, and because we respond promptly to her crying with cuddles, food, diaper-changes or changes of scenery, she rarely cries for long. Less crying in the house means less stress, which means more amicable spouses.
And because she’s so portable – requiring no bottles or strollers or special beds – it’s easy to go on family “dates.”
Now, a brief word about date nights:
Sorry, this is the only photo we have of the three of us. We don't normally look this put-together.
As a new parent, everywhere you go people expound upon the importance of date nights for marriage. My mom-in-law keeps repeating in somber tones about how important it is for us to go have dinner or see a movie alone.
We haven’t gone on a single date without our baby yet and she’s 5 months old. We haven’t even tried feeding her with a bottle yet.
I can’t say I’ve felt the effects on our marriage yet.
I asked Ben the other day, while the three of us were on our way to have dinner, if he thought we should put more effort into going on dates without the baby. “Mmm, nah,” he said after a few moments. “How would it be any different than this?”
I’m sure things will be different when she’s older, when she can talk and interrupt and whine. But while she’s an infant, it’s no extra strain to have her quietly sitting and watching from my lap as we talk and eat and watch movies.
Everyone seems concerned that we’re going to fall out of love if we keep our baby close to us at all times, but I’m not finding that to be the case at all. Her presence doesn’t interfere with our intimacy or dampen our love for each other. We still talk about all the important things, exchange details about our hours spent apart, and have fun together.
So, like you said, I don’t have any experience with any other type of parenting, and we’ve only been doing this for 5 months with a single child, so I can’t say anything with certainty. But I personally think AP is the best approach to keep out marriage healthy . . . because it keeps us and our baby healthy.
What are your thoughts?
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