Breastfeeding and attachment parenting - your thoughts

[awfulpersonme]

I've not posted on this board before but have lurked a lot.

I'm interested to see what you think about two things I have thought about a lot in recent weeks - breastfeeding and attachment parenting.

I breastfeed my 5 month old and as such was on a few Facebook groups for support. On these groups I have seen comments stating that women who ff should not have children, that formula should only be available on prescription for babies who need it medically, and asking for tips on how to persuade their female friends and relatives to breastfeed their babies. These groups are largely AP based.

So:

1. Is pressurising women to breastfeed essentially anti feminist? Isn't it just another way of telling us what we should and shouldn't do with our bodies, another way of making female bodies public property?

2. aren't a lot of the attachment parenting principles essentially quite anti-woman? Every AP group I've seen seems to place a mother's need for outside stimulation, sleep, and good mental health as far, far below the needs of her children (at all ages, not just newborns and young babies). The idea that you must be around your baby 24/7 just seems to me to be another way of keeping women firmly "in their place".

What do you all think??

bread

I was talking about women who don't want to breastfeed being told they should.

Not about breastfeeding itself.

53rd those things are the basics of parenting - meeting the child's physical and emotional needs. No need for a label - that's just parenting.
And they really don't reflect what is usually considered AP which is a lot more prescriptive than that. It's a straw man argument really - no one is criticising the things on your list as anti-feminist in the first place

those things are the basics of parenting - meeting the child's physical and emotional needs. No need for a label - that's just parenting

This. What other approach to parenting is there

It's a straw man argument really - no one is criticising the things on your list as anti-feminist in the first place

Those things are, like I said, about the closest it's possible to get to the "official AP line" on anything.

They are also, like I said, broadly accepted by the AP in general as a good descriptor of what AP is.

And they reflect my general experience of how my life is lived, as an AP parent doing that stuff.

And they really don't reflect what is usually considered AP which is a lot more prescriptive than that

Yes. THAT'S the straw man!

The percentage of women who actively don't want to breastfeed is fairly small if you look at initiation rates. I feel like this is a bit of a straw man argument for 'choice' when in reality there is usually little choice. It tends to be you are lucky and find breastfeeding easy or you doggedly persevere through pain and difficulty or you formula feed. Choice between pain and not pain is not a true choice.

I feel to see why the NHS should provide formula advice. Formula is a product, the companies should provide decent instructions. But they don't because misinformation perpetuates the culture of shame (which increases sales) and blaming the NHS for failing formula feeders / expecting resources to be spent on formula perpetuates the whole mummy wars sham (which increases sales). Lass if you needed formula feeding advice why aren't you angry with the manufacturers for not providing clear instructions?

those things are the basics of parenting - meeting the child's physical and emotional needs. No need for a label - that's just parenting

This. What other approach to parenting is there

Well, lots?

Ensuring emotionally safe sleep rules out CIO-style sleep training.

Practicing "positive discipline" rules out a lot of common discipline methods.

Striving for balance for all members of the family rules out approaches which totally sacrifice all the mother's needs to the child (despite AP getting criticised for this allllll the time).

And yes, it is a broad, general approach, and a set of principles rather than strict instructions. That's the point.

I agree with 53rd. Taking umbrage with AP because a few extremists take it too far... Well replace AP with any organisation / religion / rough group of principles you like and it's clear how ridiculous it is.

Sometimes people are silly. Sometimes they are wrong. Doesn't mean you have to throw the baby out with the bath water.

All children's needs are different though. My son for instance gets more and more riled up with "gentle" techniques like the no cry sleep solution etc. He hates being rocked to sleep. He hates being cuddled to sleep. He won't co sleep or feed to sleep. I was (am) suffering from PND from lack of sleep and really did not feel able to care for him as he deserved. We did controlled crying which worked in days and he sleeps much better now and is happier as a result.

IMO, I met my baby's needs by doing that, because he needed to sleep and nothing else was working.

Yes, all children's needs are different. (Which is one of the things I liked about AP right from the start, that it isn't a list of "you MUST do XYZ exactly as is set out in this book!" but focused instead on meeting the needs of your individual child. Unlike some other approaches I could mention bloody Baby Whisperer book I spent actual money on mutter mutter sulk ...)

I think some things, like doing strict close-the-door-and-don't-come-back-till-morning CIO for an 8-week-old, aren't meeting the needs of any child. But that's not the same as thinking everyone needs to do exactly the same with their child, regardless of what their child is telling them it needs.

Out of curiousity, if anyone is good with statistics 9I am not, I'm one of those people who confuses false ones with real ones) out of the women who choose to formula feed, how many of them did breastfeed with another child? Like I said, I breastfed my DTs but if I have another child, I will formula feed. I think it'd be interesting to see how many women choose not to after successfully doing it before.

Batteries the reason i think formula should be shown in hospitals is for first time mothers who aren't breastfeeding. Refusing to help them seems quite cruel, just because the HCP thinks they made the wrong choice. After all, who is going to make the first feed after birth? Does that baby just not get fed? I mean, how does it work?

The only problem I have with attachment parenting is the term attachment parenting.

Talk about a loaded phrase.

Yes it implies that any other form of parenting doesn't foster secure attachment.

And in that Guardian article the women interviewed (who are official AP UK organisers) pretty much flat out say it. They basically say that if you don't AP the right way, then your children may end up very troubled.

So I humbly suggest that the negative associations with AP are reinforced by the very people who define AP.

Special it goes the other way too. Lots of mothers don't breastfeed with their first and then go on to breastfeed subsequent children.

I know Batteries, i was actually coming from the viewpoint that breastfeeding your second is more likely, so was wondering if it's rare for someone who did successfully breastfeed to choose not too. But because i'm no good at stats, I don't know how to work it all out.

Lass if you needed formula feeding advice why aren't you angry with the manufacturers for not providing clear instructions?

Oh fgs do you think I can't read? What I needed advice on was how to introduce formula and/or mixed feed not how to make it up. Formula manufacturers don't, indeed probably can't , tell you that as that would taken as promoying their evil product.

Health visitor and vile woman at NCT refused to tell me. The NCT woman was very much of the MooCow mindset- I just wasn't trying hard enough. As for "breast is best" it was her mantra.

I fail to see why the NHS should provide formula advice. Formula is a product, the companies should provide decent instructions. But they don't because misinformation perpetuates the culture of shame (which increases sales)

As explained the advice I needed related to how to introduce formula, bugger all about how to mix or store it. Useless health visitor and vile NCT woman both knew I was going back to work full time, both knew expressing had been a disaster yet both refused to tell me anything about how to introduce formula. Indeed NCT woman just banged on about expressing.

I got plenty of misinformation about how lovely and easy bf was. I got plenty of shaming from the NCT woman and you and MooCow seem pretty keen on shaming too.

Actually, yours and her self righteous opinions are quite funny. Especially your comments about getting instructions from the manufacturers since you clearly missed where I'd said what information I needed in your zeal to belittle anyone who fails at breastfeeding.

I nearly died when DD was born. DH did almost everything along with my MIL who came down for the first few weeks to help out.
I BF by simply lying down and letting DD get on with it.
I hadn't read any parenting books but when DD went to nursery, the lady who ran it (who was in the middle of her childcare degree) said DD was the most securely attached child she'd ever seen and asked how we'd done it.
To this day we don't really know. No AP, some mixed feeding - I went back to work, DD went to nursery, I couldn't run around after DD so left her playing on her own...looking at some of these threads/articles/books we did all the wrong things apparently.

Oh and by the way Batteries the NCT woman had nothing to do with the NHS, so no need to fret that I was trying to waste NHS resources.

I don't see anything self-righteous in stating facts, but this conversation will always get derailed by emotional responses because it's a emotive topic.

I have never said people stop breastfeeding because they don't try hard enough. I have made it clear I think people are failed by the system, the one that is designed to encourage profits for baby product manufacturers (not just formula, Everything. We can't be trusted to bath our children, teach them anything, without some special product) and also to encourage us to separate from our babies and get out there paying taxes and 'contributing to society'. It's as if raising the next generation to be responsive, empathetic, kind people has no value, because you can't put a price on it.

Who stands to directly financially benefit from AP principles... No-one. Hence why it is belittled, and undermined. It's 'woman's work' and therefore has no place in what counts as worthwhile.

As long as the conversation is viewed as personal attacks, and people respond in a defensive and emotive way, so we are always squabbling amongst ourselves, we are being controlled and manipulated into thinking the problem lies within us. It is not within us. It is the people who want to make profit from us that are the problem.

It's interesting reading this from the vantage point of not really being so invested in it anymore. I was a long-term breastfeeder who struggled hugely with bfing initiation and PND and all sorts of other nasties.

What I find most interesting about the discourse around attachment parenting etc is a) how little it has to do with attachment; b) how attachment has increasingly become focused on the mother when the research would suggest that children need multiple attachments and c) how breastfeeding has become conflated with secure attachments when the context of breastfeeding is more important e.g. if a mother hates and is hugely ambivalent about breastfeeding for any reason, it may be better in that case for attachment not to breastfeed because what's critical is a responsive and attuned parental relationship which is a process, not a tick box of indicators.

And yes to not only this:
" have made it clear I think people are failed by the system, the one that is designed to encourage profits for baby product manufacturers (not just formula, Everything. We can't be trusted to bath our children, teach them anything, without some special product) and also to encourage us to separate from our babies and get out there paying taxes and 'contributing to society'. It's as if raising the next generation to be responsive, empathetic, kind people has no value, because you can't put a price on it."

But to the very, very gendered nature of this. Ask yourself who that really benefits - who does that message serve? Everyone needs an expert on everything now... and what if the reason we think we do is the very problem that is most pertinent, that we are not allowed to trust deeply our own instincts and intuitions unless there's a slew of (male-dominated) research sanctioning every action?

Who stands to directly financially benefit from AP principles... No-one.

I disagree with this statement. Having read this thread and the Guardian article, it seems to be a conservative, controlling male patriarchy benefits greatly from having women devoting themselves entirely to their children at the expense of their own needs. Now I learn the main advocates are conservative Christians, my instinctive unease about the whole AP 'movement' makes sense. I always sensed the desire to control women just below the surface - it turns out not every far below.

I breastfed and had baby in my bed/used a sling as it suited, so I am not against any of that stuff. But making it into a 'thing' and proselytising on its behalf does not seem pro-women to me. If women want to FF or sleep train I really don't see it is anyone else's concern or business, quite frankly. There are as many different ways to be a parent as there are parents and no one way is 'right' - life is more complex than that.

I have never tried to force another woman to breastfeed or to parent in the way I think is right - aside from confronting abuse or neglect.

I have never used the phrase attachment parenting but have realised that MN would label me as such. I also have older children In their mid to late teens who were raised in a more Gina Ford manner and I do think that I am happier with my current form of parenting.

1) Is pressurising women to breastfeed essentially anti feminist?
I see breastfeeding as one of the ultimate feminist expressions. I have for varying lengths of time kept six children alive through my own female body and by using it in the way that biology intended. Pressurising women is wrong but supporting women to breastfeed is supporting feminism in my view.

2) aren't a lot of the attachment parenting principles essentially quite anti-woman?
I am a SAHP but I am not around my children 24/7. I take holidays with my husband on our own, I have time most days to pursue my own interests. My identity as a feminist is very important to me. As I said above I have not really made a conscious decision to be an AP although at a subconscious level I may have done as my own parents were cold and abusive. I have chosen to take them easiest route of least resistance and that tends to involve me taking an AP approach. I really cannot be bothered with the whole bottle thing and we travel a fair bit so breastfeeding has tended to be easier aside from medical issues which I have had. Co sleeping or bed sharing is easier than sleep training. Using a sling enables me to get one with my day and much less faff than a pram. I also just really like holding and cuddling babies.

My husband has never been pushed out, it is attachment parenting not mothering. The first few weeks there is a risk of this as the baby establishes feeding but there is so much more to parenting than feeding.

If women want to FF or sleep train I really don't see it is anyone else's concern or business

The links with childhood obesity, breast cancer (for the mother), poor oral health, poor mental health, all correlate highly with formula use. It's not as simple as 'different strokes for different folks'. breastfeeding exclusively for every child would eliminate nearly a million child deaths worldwide, and closer to home save the NHS millions too.

I agree mothers should be able to make an informed choice, and breastfeeding is not for everyone. If formula was a decent product, I'd say whatever. But it's not. It's a corrupt industry with a sub-standard product, that preys on the insecurities of women, insecurities that are actually created by the industry itself. They put things in the formula so they can advertise it 'hey we have so much iron in here for the health of your baby', but the iron isn't even soluable or digestible, the baby gets hardly any iron from the product but it does get an awful dose of constipation while it adjusts.

Controlled crying is not the same issue. Babies feel a physical need to be with other humans, it's built into them to panic and scream when left so that they don't get abandoned and die. They can't help that evolution hasn't trained that out of them yet, and the cortisol stress hormones in a crying baby are the same as one who has learnt not to bother crying anymore, and that's not good for brain development. Not doing controlled crying is more about creating the optimum conditions for brain development in my opinion. But it does link again, to the idea that being nurturing and responsive as a parent is not seen as valuable, because it is traditionally seen as 'women's work'.

Attachment Parenting is exclusively aimed at the mother though. How many AP Facebook groups have a vibrant male cohort?

How many men even talk about AP?

It honestly should be called Attachment Mothering cos that's what it is.

Even the co sleeping thing. How many AP groups recommends the father sleeping in the spare room if it's too crowded in the marital bed? That basically allows one person to do no parenting during the night whilst the other does 100% of it. There's a get out clause basically wired into the ethos. Cos co sleeping is that important to help the child feel safe and secure.

.... Are you serious Moo?

This is a good article on breastfeeding. I've done a lot of research on this and the research on its health benefits (which do exist) are over exaggerated.

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-case-against-breast-feeding/307311/

I breastfeed my son because I enjoy it, because we both found it easy and because it is convenient.

If these things did not apply I would switch to formula. My body is my own.