What Is Attachment Parenting?

Lysa Parker is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Attachment Parenting International. API is an organization committed to promoting parenting practices that create strong, healthy, emotional bonds between children and their parents.

 

LP: Hi Kemi. It’s a great thrill to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

 

RM: Now, I would imagine that many of our readers are familiar with Attachment Parenting, if not already practicing AP themselves. But for those who may not be familiar with the term, what is Attachment Parenting and why is it so important?

 

LP: You know, over 20 years ago—my oldest son is 26—and it was only after he was born that I learned about the term Attachment Parenting when read Dr. Sears’ books. Dr. Sears didn’t mention anything about Attachment Theory, but this is what we have found Attachment Parenting is based in. After Barbara Nicholson, my co-founder, and I started doing research as we were beginning to form the organization, we discovered Attachment Theory and we were surprised to find out that this research on the primal bond between parents—between mothers and their babies had been researched for over 50 years and yet that information had not been well-known in the lay community amongst parents, it was mostly known among researchers. So that is the origination of the term Attachment Parenting. I’m sure Dr. Sears didn’t get into it because he wanted to reach parents on a very simple, more understandable level. But we were very pleased to find that so much of what we believed intuitively as mothers, and as fathers, was based in science and there was enough science to support our beliefs.

 

RM: So what does non-attachment look like? What sorts of relational issues might a child who did not bond properly with their parents experience?

 

LP: Well, we’ve learned so much from children who have been in orphanages, who have languished for long periods of time without human contact, and there’s also been anecdotal stories of children who have had their physical needs meet, but not their emotional needs met. We know, sadly, from the tragic deaths of these babies or the lack of development in these children that human beings require emotional nurturing and nurturing physical touch as much as they require food, air to breathe, and sustenance. It’s just so critical.

 

What they’re finding with children who do not form attachments, and there are basically four levels of insecure attachments. There are probably many of us in our culture that have some form of insecure attachment, and that can effect personal relationships. But on a very basic level, as far as children, they tend to act out.

 

Children with attachment disorders, that have been specifically diagnosed by a psychologist or psychiatrist, they exhibit extreme behaviors—inability to give eye contact, they tend to be overly affectionate. I worked in schools for many years and once I learned about Attachment Theory and the different degrees of insecure attachment, I started really observing that in many of the students that I worked with, and even those that I didn’t. There were many times that children would come up to me; didn’t know me from anybody, I was a total stranger; and they would just come up and hug me and just be very affectionate. So that is another hallmark of children with attachment disorders—they can be overly affectionate with strangers, which is something that can be extremely dangerous in our culture today.

 

Children with attachment disorders tend to hoard sugar and food and some of them may be obsessed with fire. Those, again, are the extremes.

 

There are other levels that are no so extreme that affect us in ways that allow us to be functioning in this society, but we see every-day examples of attachment disorders. There’s kind of a spectrum of this disorder from people who are con-artists—we see white collar crime all the time. These are people who don’t have a very well-developed conscience, yet they are able to function in society and have relationships; but often times they have a history of poor relationships with people and they don’t really have the empathy skills for having intimate relationships, let alone in business dealings. So it’s just a wide spectrum of problems that we see and are accustomed to now because it’s just part of our culture.

 

RM: Right. Well, the research on the affects of attachment vs. non-attachment seem pretty clear. I know we had Dr. Elliot Barker of the Canadian Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Children on the show and he touched on it a little bit. Given the research, what would you say to the parents who really, I think, have been duped by that psychological orientation that says the following: “Babies don’t start remembering things until much later, so all of this stuff that you’re doing to attach or bond with your child really isn’t that important.”?

 

LP: Well, if you talk to any of the current brain researchers, they will say that that is a false statement. They know from their research that the brain absorbs all experiences—they call that implicit memory, it becomes part of the limbic part of the brain. Implicit memory is not a memory that you can instantly recall, but it is a memory that can be triggered by an experience, a smell, a sound, or words. Even in our relationships with our spouses, our partners, and our children, when we talk about people pushing our buttons, those are experiences that are triggering something in our implicit memories—memories that occur during our early childhood, that we cannot remember but had some kind of traumatic effect upon us.

 

There is just too much research to refute any and all statements such as those.

 

RM: Now Lysa, do you mind sharing a bit about the Eight Ideals of Attachment Parenting. What are they?

 

LP: Not at all. Originally, when we originally founded Attachment Parenting International (API), we adopted Dr. Sears’ “Baby Bs”. He constructed them in a way that is memorable to parents, such as: Birth, Bonding, Breastfeeding, Baby-wearing, and so on. But as we have evolved as an organization, and because of our mission to reach people in the mainstream, not solely attachment parents, and also to keeping with the science that continues to be done that supports the Eight Ideals, we have recently gone through a revision of what we call the Ideals.

 

We call them the Ideals because we know there are no perfect parents—none of us are perfect parents—but they are ideals we hope to strive for and we want parents to understand that this is not a recipe for parenting, that you have to do every single thing or you will not have a strong bond with your child. Rather, these are the behaviors that science supports for optimal development for a child emotionally, psychologically, neurologically, and we do the best we can, given the circumstances.

 

With that out of the way, the Eight Ideals began with: Ideally, you prepare for childbirth. Not necessarily waiting until you’re pregnant but prior to, if possible. If it is a planned pregnancy, you want to get you body into shape, you want to have your mind in shape, and to just be prepared. Also, you want to get prepared for parenting. So many times, the parents focus on the birth, but then after the baby comes, they’re lost. They’re like “What do I do now?” Part of that is normal, because you’re so focused on the birth and you can’t really relate to actually having this little human infant in your arms. But that’s the beginning.

 

There’s so much parents can do in preparation and designing a birth that they want. The more involved the parent is in their birth, the more empowered they will become and the more confident they will be as parents. So it really gets them off to a good start to be involved and to have the least interventions as possible in your birth.

 

Secondly, once the baby’s born, it’s really important for the parents to become attune to the baby’s communication. The only way the babies can communicate is through crying initially, so we help parents understand that crying is their way of expressing their needs and that it’s important for parents to respond to those needs and to respond sensitively, not begrudgingly or in a resentful way. But to say, “I’m here for you. I understand what you are trying to communicate to me, and if I don’t I’ll figure it out.” A lot of it is just trial and error in the early weeks and months. No parent is instantly attuned to their baby and it is a process and this is the attachment process—the process of becoming attuned. There are all sorts of research studies out there that support this key element in Attachment Parenting, and that is being emotionally responsive—it is the cornerstone to Attachment Parenting.

 

RM: So not letting your baby “cry it out.”

 

LP: Exactly. And now, we are seeing more research being done on that—on the crying it out—but we can get to that a little bit later. Often times, that occurs during sleep training. For sure, crying it out is not teaching your baby anything except that they cannot trust you to be there when they need you. It’s all about building those first few relationships of trust. If you’re there when they need you, then they learn that those relationships are built on a solid foundation and those first lessons of trust carry on through their lifespan with other relationships.

 

Thirdly: At one point, and Dr. Sears in his Baby Bs promotes breastfeeding. We also highly promote breastfeeding. In our recent revision, we have changed that to “feeding with love and respect.” The reason we did that is because there are so many parents, mothers, who are bottle feeding, especially those who have adopted babies, and we don’t want them skipping over this idea.

 

What we want them to understand is that when you’re feeding your baby with a bottle—first of all, you can practice Attachment Parenting and bottle feed, although we are very clear that breastfeeding is the ideal for numerous reasons—but when you’re bottle feeding, you need to be holding the baby as if you were breastfeeding. Not propping the bottle, not letting your older baby just lay there, feeding himself. Feeding is part of the attachment process and it also forces the mother or father to sit down and have that one-to-one time, that eye contact, that interaction with the baby. Nature’s ideal model is breastfeeding, and we are trying to replicate that, or hoping that parents will replicate that through bottle feeding and understanding the importance of the act of feeding in the attachment process.

 

We go on to the importance of nurturing touch. That can be through wearing your baby because that keeps the baby happy, the baby is close to your body; can hear your breathing and your heart. I remember wearing my baby and people would always say, “Oh, he’s such a good baby. He never cries. He never…” And I would always say, “That’s because he’s on me. He’s feeling very safe and secure.” Which reminds me of something that Dr. Isabelle Fox said that I love. She said that babies really require three things: Proximity, protection and predictability—the three Ps. Proximity, protection and predictability. So when babies have all those, then they feel very comfortable and they’re not going to cry. The only reason they cry is when something is bothering them.

 

RM: It’s funny; we actually took a trip to West Africa earlier this year to have a thanksgiving ceremony for our baby. It must have been a million degrees, but at that time, all I had was a padded ring sling, which was just way too warm. I ended up carrying my daughter in my arms. Everywhere we went, everyone came up to tell me I should be wearing my baby on my back—complete strangers—they would whisper to each other, and they would motion to me to tie my daughter on. In this culture, wearing your baby is the natural thing to do. I didn’t see a single stroller, and it wasn’t because people couldn’t afford strollers, I saw the largest plasma televisions I’d ever seen, but it was that strollers were looked upon as a Western aberration and distasteful. It was that a mother and child belonged together.

 

LP: They are a unit. That’s right. That’s interesting. I know that some of the tribes in various parts of Africa have been shown videos of Western moms and how they care for their children and how we put them in cribs and rooms by themselves and they consider that abusive—and especially letting them cry it out.

 

RM: On the same trip, I was asked if I slept with my baby in a cage—that’s what they called a crib.

 

LP: Wow, yeah.

 

RM: What about co-sleeping? Why is co-sleeping important?

 

LP: Co-sleeping is important, especially for the breastfeeding relationship, because we know that studies have shown that it enhances the breastfeeding relationship and it allows mothers to get more rest and for the baby to feel safe and the baby’s less likely to wake up fully during the night. I remember when I slept with my babies, it was amazing how they could sniff out the breast. They might have been very young infants and it was dark and they couldn’t see, but they could find the breast. That was always amazing to me.

 

That is one of the ideals we have changed from Co-Sleeping to Nighttime Parenting. Because regardless of the parents’ choice—we want to be respectful of parents’ choices, we want to give them the information, but ultimately it’s up to the parents and their choices given their circumstances. If we are going to, you know, appeal to families who might have difficulty with that for whatever reason, we want them to know that it is important to be responsive during the night. Their child needs to be in a safe sleeping environment whether they co-sleep or not. That is important for the baby to be in close proximity, which, thankfully, the American Academy of Pediatrics is supporting this as well.

 

Co-sleeping has become very controversial. There are liability issues involved with organizations such as ours and others, so we have to be very careful in what we’re promoting. There’s a really litigious and punitive climate out there toward parents who co-sleep. There have been situations that have been very tragic. But that aside, let’s just say that babies need responsive parenting during the night as well. Crying it out or sleep training is not only dangerous and inappropriate, but it could very well affect the cortisol levels of the baby’s brain, and it could affect them psychologically later in life. I know that sounds very dire, but we feel that it’s important to get this information out to parents because it has been treated very cavalierly by so-called parenting experts and even pediatricians recommend this. Most pediatricians recommend sleep training. That’s a very big issue for us, and a very big challenge we’re trying to get the word out that this is dangerous.

 

I want to recommend a book that just came out from the UK, it’s called “The Science of Parenting”. It’s an excellent book and it talks about what happens when a baby is allowed to cry it out. This author has gathered some of the recent research that has been done on cortisol levels, stress levels, and what it does to the developing brain. I would strongly encourage people to get that book, it’s excellent and very well worth the money. It’s $25, but it’s got beautiful pictures and diagrams and hardcover. It’s an excellent book.

 

One of the ways our Eight Ideals are slightly different than Dr. Sears’ and Martha Sears’ Eight Baby Bs is that we ask parents to limit the separation of their baby in the early weeks, months, and years because that can be detrimental to the attachment process.

 

Our Ideal reads “Providing consistency of care.” Isabelle Fox was one of the first ones to talk about the dangers of caregiver roulette and how babies, even in the best daycares, can go through a series of different caregivers in a given month or year and how detrimental that can be on an infant and the attachment process. We encourage mothers and/or fathers to find ways to stay home with their children in the early years.

 

If they cannot—if they are a single mom and they have to work or whatever dire circumstances force them both to work—then we offer this hierarchy of care recommendations and consistency of care—when you interview alternative care situations, you need to find out, you need to make sure that your child has consistency of a loving caregiver. Ideally, if you can’t take care of your child, then a loving relative, someone who has an emotional investment in your child would be the next best thing.

 

RM: So if you have to go out to work, make sure you’re not passing the child off between caregivers or at a daycare that does?

 

LP: Right. And that just puts so many parents who are struggling financially in almost a no-win situation because the preponderance of daycares have been found to be substandard, as high as 90%. There is so much that has to be done on all different levels—supporting parents in the workplace and also providing options for them that keep the attachment process as the primal priority for care.

 

Then from that, our Ideal #7 is positive discipline. We help parents find alternative ways of disciplining their children. More importantly, we teach parents ways of understanding why children behave the way they do and looking at children through their eyes; not seeing them as evil little creatures that have to be broken or trained, but rather they are spiritual beings that need to be handled with care and love and with dignity. The discipline strategies that we use and borrow from always include using respect and dignity and understanding the reasons behind why children behave the way they do. Usually, that is their way of communicating. Many times, they don’t have the words to articulate how they are feeling, they just feel the way they feel and they don’t know how to express it, so it just comes out in some kind of behavior. It’s all about becoming more attuned to your child and finding positive ways of resolving these difficult times.

 

RM: Now Lysa, before the break, you were talking to us about the Eight Ideals of Attachment Parenting and some of the ways you do things differently from Dr. Sears’ Baby Bs. What is the Eighth Ideal?

 

LP: The Eighth Ideal is maintaining balance in one’s family life and that is probably the hardest Ideal of all. It’s not something that everybody can do all the time. Realistically, we can’t all be balanced all the time, but what we can do is assess each day and try to figure out ways of meeting the needs of your family, your baby, and nurturing yourself. That takes an every day effort. Besides attending our support groups, we give parents recommendations, ideas, and tips on ways they can find balance in their life.

 

It’s very important, too, to focus on the marital/partner relationship because children need to have an intact family. Divorce has such difficult ramifications for children. It’s very important that partners and spouses work on their relationship.

 

I know, as a mom it was really hard—you just become so absorbed with your child that it becomes really … you become “touched out” some days and you know you just want to be by yourself. It’s important to try to carve out even just 15 minutes by yourself. One of the things we recommend is finding someone, even if not a relative or friend, someone in the neighborhood who you’re close to that can come over and stay with you, help you entertain your baby while you just go in your bedroom and maybe read a book or take a bath or walk around the block. But at least you’re there if and when the baby needs you. It’s hard, but it’s real important to do that.

 

RM: What inspired you to start Attachment Parenting International?

 

LP: Barbara Nicholson, as I mentioned earlier, and I had been involved in La Leche League, which probably your listeners know that that is a support group that provides education about breastfeeding. We realized how transformed we were as mothers—not only did we learn about breastfeeding but we felt much more bonded with our babies and we learned about Attachment Parenting through La Leche League. We were able to have women in our groups who were more experienced and they modeled Attachment Parenting. It was such a unique way, compared to the culture it was a very unique way of raising children. It was so dignified and so loving and so different. I was intrigued as a new mom and I learned from watching them and seeing the results.

 

I remember wondering to myself, “What if this is wrong, what if this isn’t… have I done damage to my child?” But I just kept seeing the positive effects—little things that I would do really worked with my child when I started using positive discipline techniques and just really trying to understand the way he was feeling or what he was trying to communicate to me, it really worked. So I wanted to offer that to parents.

 

It was one thing that when we were in La Leche League that we felt was missing that there wasn’t a second phase of La Leche League, it’s like one you quit breastfeeding, “I guess I can’t go to the meetings anymore.” But the parents wanted more, they wanted to keep this support group up, this nurturing and Attachment Parenting, there wasn’t that for parents. But we had heard that there were Attachment Parenting support groups popping up around the country, but they also had their own definitions or versions of Attachment Parenting. So once we started investigating Attachment Theory, we decided that we would synthesize or crystallize what we believed to be Attachment Parenting and what could be supported by science and what was actively involved in the attachment process that was connected with Attachment Theory. That’s what we’ve done and of course, Dr. Sears had it right from the get-go. But we’ve just kind of expanded on that a little bit more and we are getting [a lot of] scientific research to support each of the Ideals.

 

I wanted to mention, too, that Elliot Barker was critical in the early months and years of our formation. He was our cheerleader, he was our sole support. We read about his organization and we called him on the phone and he counseled us and he was just a wealth of informational and such a loving, caring person. Being a forensic psychiatrist, it was amazing to us that he came upon Attachment Parenting as kind of like the answer to all the world’s problems. He didn’t necessarily… he came to it through his own way, through his work with his clients and his patients. We owe so much to Elliot, he’s such a wonderful person and doing so much for Attachment Parenting in Canada.

 

RM: API is operating now in how many countries?

 

LP: We have 86 support groups in approximately eight countries. Of course, most of them are in the US, but we have a group in Ireland, where we had our first API conference just this past May.

 

RM: I almost attended that conference, but we were preparing to move back from the UK to the States, so I wasn’t able to make it.

 

LP: It was fantastic! We have another group forming in Ireland. We have three groups in the UK and we have a group forming in Norway and Japan has been very interested. There’s a group in Japan that is interested in possibly forming support groups. We’ve been there twice already.

 

It’s just amazing to us how people are really getting it and they’re so interested and it’s not just our culture but other Western cultures. Our Western culture is just leaching into all these other cultures that we’ve admired for so long that we’ve believed practice Attachment Parenting. Now Japan is one of them. But then there are other cultural influences that while may be very devoted to their children… in the early years they co-sleep, they breastfeed, but when they’re older and when they go to school the culture changes and they’re under a lot of pressure in other ways. It was very heartening for us to see this subculture, very much like the AP subculture here that is kind of rejecting some of the Western practices that have leached into their culture. They are also rejecting some of the old traditional things that have had some devastating effects on people such as strong pressure with the schooling and the work, and trying to get back to the old way of parenting.

 

I remember I was just very moved by my translator—who had nothing to do with the group that invited us—but she had read Dr. Sears’ books and she said to me that she was the working person in her family and her husband was a stay-at-home dad and that she practiced Attachment Parenting and felt that her generation felt cheated because both mothers and father worked and they ended up in all different kinds of care situations. I felt like that was a very profound statement. She chose to adopt Attachment Parenting. 

 

RM: It seems to me that very many of the non-mainstream practices that we refer to as Attachment Ideals here in the West are actually often the normal mainstream child-rearing practices of native cultures. But, back to API, what types of support activities does API offer?

 

LP: Well, we do have the support groups, and people can go to our website, AttachmentParenting.org and click on Support Groups. They can either find a support group in their local area and if there isn’t a support group then they might consider starting a support group.

 

We have this affiliation process where they fill out an application and they go through a leadership process. We have a director of Leader Applicants who takes them through that process. It can take as little as two months to several months, depending on how fast the applicant is able to fulfill the requirements of leadership. The Internet has just been an incredible tool for us, for people finding us and starting support groups.

 

As with any model such as this, you’re going to have support groups that come and go, but we’ve been able to maintain nearly 100 support groups and we’re continuing to grow. We have nearly 50 leader applicants right now, so there is a huge interest.

 

We also provide educational materials. We’re revamping our Eight Ideals, we’re expanding them. When we’re finished, we’ll have a book that we’ll be able to sell and offer people. Our leaders have leader manual that we’ve written and compiled over the years and we offer regional trainings. We’re about to begin doing some online trainings. 

 

Basically parents come to the support groups either because they want to learn about Attachment Parenting, they’ve heard about it, or they’re already practicing Attachment Parenting and they need the support because we are not supported in the mainstream culture and we have obstacles everywhere we turn. But we wanted to form an international organization because we believe, and history has shown us that when we are united in our views and efforts and our struggles, we are much more likely to make a difference.

 

Parents like that—they like the fact that they’re part of this national and international effort, they’re not just sitting alone in their home in some city feeling like they’re weird because they want to parent this way and no one else does.

 

We hear from parents every day that say, “Oh, I’m so grateful that you’re here. I didn’t know it was called Attachment Parenting, it just seemed so natural to me.” You know, on some level, it’s kind of sad we have to call it Attachment Parenting. It’s just what you do. It should come naturally.

 

If there’s just one thing we want parents to get out of what we offer is trust your instincts—you already know how to parent your child, you just might have become confused because of what people are saying to you or because of what doctors are telling you or what you are reading in parenting books. But you are the expert in your child and you just need to do what your heart tells you to do and listen to your baby.

 

RM: To learn more about Attachment Parenting International or Attachment Parenting or if you are an Attachment Parent and you need support, please do visit the API website. Lysa, that address is?

 

LP: AttachmentParenting.org

 

RM: Thank you so much for joining me today on The Radio Mom Show. It has been a pleasure.

 

LP: Thank you, Kemi, it’s been great! Thank you so much. Peaceful parenting to all your listeners out there.

 

RM: And same to you.

Empathic Parenting: An Interview With Elliott Barker

Since 1975, Dr. Barker has served as president of the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the organization that, from 1978 until 2003, published the highly-regarded quarterly journal Empathic Parenting.

RM: Dr. Barker, for almost 40 years now you have been assessing and engaging with both adults and teenagers who committed the most violent of crimes. You’ve also testified as an expert witness in approximately 200 Supreme Court cases.

 

EB: Well, they weren’t all Supreme Court cases, but some of them were.

 

RM: Okay. How have your interactions with these individuals shaped your convictions regarding the needs of young children?

 

EB: Well, when I started at Ontario’s maximum-security mental hospital in 1965, I developed programs there that got popular for psychopaths and many of them were transferred into the hospital for those treatment programs.

 

Worldwide, there is a clear awareness that psycopathy is next impossible to treat, but also the evidence and the research literature is quite clear that the failure of a capacity for empathy happens at the very earliest years. I was involved in developing treatment programs with a large number of psychopaths and aware of the world’s literature. We tried very hard with specialized programs to treat them and they were not successful.

 

I turned my attention, in 1975, to create an organization which would beat the drum for more enlightened care for children in the earliest years because society seems to be oblivious to that. In fact, on early radio shows, they used to say that the most formative years were 12 to 15 or all sorts of things like that. There was very little public concern about nurturing in the first three years. The Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children really was established to beat the drum for that and to increase public awareness of it.

 

Coincidentally, though, the world was marching towards daycare at the same time at a great rate. The CSPCC—which is the acronym for the Society—has really been out of step with mainstream society, although, I think in the last few years, that is beginning to turn around.

 

RM: You’re currently in private practice specializing in the treatment of teenagers. How would you describe the teenagers that you see on a regular basis?

 

EB: Well, many of them have difficulty with the law and most of them have difficulty with drugs and alcohol and difficulty with schooling, holding a job, or maintaining a relationship with a boy or girl.

 

RM: Do you attribute this behavior to biology, parenting received during the early years, or both?

 

EB: Well, it differs for, I think, different kids. Certainly, it’s rare to find a teenager these days who is in emotional difficulty or difficulty with the law who has a stable family background. Most of them come from split families or next to no families. It’s hard to know in any individual case to know what the causative factors are and it is very hard to get a clear history of the nurturing of the child in the first three years, and that is part of the problem. If you go back when the kid is 16 or 17 and talk to the mother about those early years, it’s tough to get an accurate impression of what was going on even if the mother was there or was consistently there in those early years because it is very subtle stuff—the interactions between a mother primarily and a child. Getting it in retrospectively after 15 years is even tougher.

 

RM: Sure. So what is the research look like in this area. Are there studies that attempt to show a correlation between let’s say the type of parenting a child receives and his or her likelihood to commit crimes?

 

EB: I think the importance of attachment is really pretty well established. Beginning, perhaps before Bowlby, but certainly with Bowlby. But there has been a massive attempt to discredit any of that attachment literature—especially Bowlby—because there has been such a high perceived need for daycare, for parking the kids somewhere else while you’re out earning a buck. Anything that suggested that that is not in the best interest of the child has been debunked vociferously for many, many years now. I think that is changing around and I think that we may begin to see policies that differentiate the importance of daycare after the age of three compared to before the age of three. The large scale studies in England and the United States have showed an increased level of aggression in daycare kids under the age of three.

 

Now the results of those studies are downplayed in the media for a good reason. Most of the media, and many of the people in government—at least the women, had their kids in daycare or do have them in daycare or their friends have them in daycare and they do not want to taut the negative findings that are coming out. But I hope that that is beginning to change and society can get reoriented about the importance of those early years and that can’t be done with changing caregivers in an institutional daycare, it just can’t.

 

RM: Wow. Dr. Barker, the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children exists to do what specifically?

 

EB: To increase public awareness of the importance of the nurturing of children in the earliest years.

 

RM: What exactly is empathic parenting?

 

EB: It’s trying to feel into the emotional needs of the infant and toddler and responding to those needs. You can feel the child’s needs and ignore them, but it’s understanding and perceiving the needs of the infant and toddler and attending to them and making it a priority to attend to them.

 

RM: Now I’m sure that there are a lot of people out there who would say, “I wasn’t raised by empathic parents and I turned out okay,” that’s usually what you hear. But what do you say to that?

 

EB: Well, you usually hear that from people who are in favor of physical punishment of children. “I was beaten and I am all right” and so on. I remember I was talking to a committee of the Senate of Canada years and years ago. One of the distinguished senators said something along the same line—I was raised this way and I’m okay. I should have said, “I’m not sure you are okay. I wish we had a measure of a capacity for empathy and see where you stood on it.” I didn’t say it of course, but I wish we did have a way of measuring empathy.

 

Empathy and trust, I think, are the root capacities of human beings and they’re deficient in a great many people. Sadly, in our society, I think psychopaths do rather well. If you don’t have to worry about the consequences of your behavior on other people you can make more money and do more stuff. 

 

So we are embedded in a consumer culture which does not reward empathy and trust. There is very little emphasis, if you watch TV and all the ads and the programs. No one is saying that a sense of community, of neighborliness, of trust with your fellow human beings in your community is the important things, it’s where it’s at. That doesn’t come off at all. It’s buy this car and some other crap that you should go out and make money to buy. It’s all wonky. Consumerism is really a root cause.

 

I used to think that the Women’s Movement championed the early daycare, but I think that they were co-opted by, as we all have been, by the values of consumerism—envy, selfishness, and greed. We’ve come to sort of accept those things as the way we should be living. It’s nonsense! It’s not the way we should be living and it impacts most severely on the infants and toddlers who are being neglected in institutional daycare while we are making a few bucks working at Mac’s Milk so we can buy a car we can worship.

 

RM: Or a TV. You believe that institutions, traditions and beliefs should be reevaluated in light of the things you said. What are some of the traditions you feel undermine empathic parenting?

 

EB: Consumerism. Arbitrary male dominance. I googled that to see what sort of literature there is and the only place I found it was on our website and something I said a long ways back. I think that is a root problem. I think that women have a very legitimate concern when they are expected to knuckle under to the beliefs of a male just because he is a male. I don’t think that there is enough attention paid to that and I would like to see effort to correct that so that males do not feel that they have this certain male prerogative to overrule females.

 

But apart from that, consumerism is really what has distorted all of our values over the last 30 years and has everyone preoccupied with making a buck to just get by. If we had equal emphasis about voluntary simplicity, if we had equal amount of time and energy getting along without things as we do trying to get the money to get things, we’d be much better off.

 

So those are a couple of societal values that need to be changed. No where is there much of a public cry about those things, and there ought to be.

 

RM: Dr. Barker, one thing that I found interesting in your organizational literature was an emphasis on pre-conception planning. What impact do you feel pre-conception planning has on parenting?

 

EB: Often, with the kinds of kids who murdered, raped, and so on. In court, people would say, “Where did things go wrong?” They went wrong before conception. Before conception the parents have to have some notion of the value they are going to attribute to the nurturing of this child and they should have some idea of the support system that is in place when they have this child. It takes half a dozen people at least to kind of nurture the people who nurture the child.

 

Instead of planning the color of the crib the room and all that nonsense, they should be counting the number of people they can count on when the baby arrives as close neighbors or at least close enough emotionally that they can call them at the drop of a hat or they can stop in and contribute and relieve the heavy work of looking after a child. That can be setup and should be set up pre-conception. The opinions that the two parents have about nurturing the child are vitally important and those are determined by the time the child is conceived.

 

That is where the emphasis should be and that’s where the preparation should be. It should be in the elementary schools primarily so it is all clearly there before children are physically able to have children.

 

RM: Well, you know Dr. Barker, I can’t help but feel somewhat saddened by that. My husband and I were fortunate. Our pregnancy was planned. We were ecstatic when we found out we were having a baby. I was so excited about parenting and I really looked upon motherhood fondly. I think most importantly, I was able to do whatever was necessary to raise my daughter in a home where she felt loved and secure.

 

But I realize that not everyone is prepared for parenthood. Some people are in all sorts of situations when they become parents and many are literally taken by surprise. Are the children born into those environments—in which parents aren’t necessarily prepared for parenthood—destined to have problems in their adult years?

 

EB: No, but it’s biased against them with that situation. There is a lot in pregnancy and birthing, when it’s done right, that the child, I think, is biologically programmed to win over the parents for adequate nurturing. The trouble is that much of our society says, “You don’t need to do that. Get out and get back to work in 15 days or whatever.” I think biologically, you know, the child is really captivating and those first smiles and so on and the reciprocal nature of what is happening between the mother and the child, particularly with breastfeeding.

 

What happens now is, studies show, there are hormonal changes in the father as well that tend toward attachment, and that can happen in a 15 or 16-year-old that gets knocked up at a party. But those mechanisms are still there by the child and by biology to make that work, but there is so much in our society that draws us away from that. So yes, it can happen and happen very well in an unplanned situation. It shouldn’t, it should be that children are exposed—there are programs that teach parenting from kindergarten through grade 8, but that should be the way that it happens so that it doesn’t happen by chance. I talked to… I better not get into my own practice, but babies come and come for various reasons, or lack of them.

 

RM: I’ve heard quite a few moms admit to feeing inadequate at some point in their parenting journey. But I’m reading here that any parent who feels inadequate or inferior is handicapped in providing optimal child nurture. Can you say a bit more about that?

 

EB: That’s been one of the reasons to not say anything negative about infant daycare—don’t make the mother feel guilty. Well, there are some things that people should feel guilty about. Neglecting the needs of an infant and toddler are high on my list for that. I don’t make any apologies for making people who are doing it wrong for feeling guilty about doing it wrong.

 

RM: I’m sure many of our listeners will have quite a bit to say about that. Go ahead, send me your emails, I’m expecting them. Well, Dr. Barker, what tools and resources can Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children offer parents to help them parent well?

 

EB: We gave a website, empathicparenting.org, and several websites that are developing. There’s a lot of information, I think, related to these issues on the website. We soon, maybe in a few months, will have all the back issues of Empathic Parenting, there are about 100 of them, up on the Internet where they can be searched. So I don’t think there’s any shortage of information for people who are inclined that way.

 

In particular, we hope to make our websites user friendly for young kids who are handy with the Internet and doing school projects on subjects related to the nurturing of children.

 

RM: Given your experience, what would you say to the moms out there are the most important ways that they can support and encourage good mental health in their children?

 

EB: Love them. Well, basically that. Empathic parenting. Sense the needs of the child and spend some energy to meet those needs, especially in the first three years. I think that after the age of three, if you abandon the child to daycare or whatever at that point, you will end up with an unhappy child or a neurotic child. Before the age of three, I think it is much more sinister but less apparent. You end up with a child with a lack of empathy and trust. That is much more sinister from a societal point of view, although the child might not feel unhappy, except in their psychopathic way they can’t get what they instantly want.

 

That’s the danger in under three. They’re not as vociferous about the needs to be there. They are, but people get attuned to their crying and being upset and have all kinds of rationalizations about that. But I think that roughly that’s the cut-off point at age three. When the child can at least say to them and they can understand why you’re leaving and when you might come back because they have object permanence. In those early years, they don’t have those things, they’re simply abandoned, feel abandoned, and feel angry about being abandoned. You don’t see that until later when they’re teenagers and so on.

 

RM: To learn more about the work of the CSPCC or empathic parenting, please do visit empathicparenting.org. I know that there is a parenting IQ test there to test your knowledge on the site as well as quite a few pictures of the same baby. Dr. Barker, who might that baby be?

 

EB: Well, it was a baby that came from a photo agency that is no longer in existence. I picked it out because it seemed to convey the vulnerability of a child, which is the essence of the problem for under threes. They are incredibly vulnerable and need their needs met then.

 

RM: Dr. Barker, thank you so much for joining me today. It has been a real pleasure having you on.

 

EB: You’re welcome. Thank you Kemi.

 

RM:  My thanks again to Dr. Elliot Barker from the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Wow! He sure did have a lot to say about parenting choices and the impact of our parenting choices on our children.

La Leche League and WABA: Support For Breastfeeding Moms

Kemi Ingram (as The Radio Mom) interviews Rebecca Magalhaes, Director of External Relations and Advocacy, La Leche League Intl.

I am pleased to have as my guest today Rebecca Magalhaes. Rebecca is the Coordinator of the Mother Support Task Force for the World Breastfeeding Alliance and the Director of External Relations and Advocacy for La Leche League International.

 

RM: Hi Rebecca. Welcome.

 

RM: Hi Kemi, it’s nice to be here.

 

Kemi: Now Rebecca, I know you actually wear a few hats, don’t you?

 

RM: Yes, I do.

 

Kemi: In addition to these two, what else do you do for WABA and La Leche League?

 

RM: Well, the main hat for La Leche League is as Director of External Relations and Advocacy Department. But for WABA? La Leche League International is also the North American regional focal point for WABA. I am the liaison for the role that La Leche League plays and we also are one of six Core Partners in WABA and as we have an interim ED right now, I am also do that function as well. I am the liaison for La Leche League being a Core Partner.

 

Just recently, there was a Core Breastfeeding Partners meeting in Pahang at the end of September. I was the one who represented La Leche League at that Core Breastfeeding Partners meeting.

 

Kemi: Oh, wow! Okay. So the main secretariat is in Malaysia?

 

RM: Yes it is. It has been from the beginning.

 

Kemi: What are some of the other countries that are involved in WABA?

 

RM: There are quite a few countries, mostly through the World Breastfeeding Week. I don’t know the number myself. All of this can be found on the WABA website. But the Core Partners are the International Baby Food Acton Network (IBFAN), so wherever IBFAN is, those are countries that are connected to WABA.

 

La Leche League International, we are in 67 countries, so, in essence those 67 countries are part of WABA.

 

And then there’s the International Lactation Consultant Association (ILCA)—another Core Partner—wherever they are.

 

Well Start International is another Core Partner. They have Well Start-trained health professionals in many different countries.

 

And then the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, which is a relatively new organization, That’s health professionals that support breastfeeding, and they’re another partner.

 

And then another partner that we’ll be phasing out now is the Linkages Project. That is was a USAID-funded international breastfeeding project, and they’re coming to the end of 10 years. They were a core partner with WABA. 

 

Kemi: Wow, so there are quite a few people involved in the World Breastfeeding Alliance.

 

RM: Yes, there are.

 

Kemi: Well, Rebecca, I became a mom about 10 months ago now whilst living in England. Throughout my pregnancy, I was encouraged to breastfeed my baby—doctors, midwives, mainstream parenting magazines, all encouraged breastfeeding for at least a year. But upon our return to the United States, it seemed as though I was beginning to detect somewhat of a resistance, if not an outright hostility, towards breastfeeding. Is this just a figment of my imagination, or are we in the States kind of anti-breastfeeding?

 

RM: I don’t know that we’re really anti-breastfeeding. I believe, certainly, since I’ve been involved in breastfeeding, which is quite a few years, there’s been an upsurge of articles in newspapers and magazines just quite a lot more, many more books related to breastfeeding than there was when I was a young mom. And certainly the USA Breastfeeding Campaign that would have been, in my time as a mom, unthinkable—that our government would have put on such a campaign. So I think that it’s not so much hostility as there’s a lot more that woman read about breastfeeding and some either women choose not to breastfeed—which is their choice—or do start to breastfeed and don’t get the information or the support that perhaps they need.

 

That is a difficult situation to be in. When you have chosen to breastfeed and you have started breastfeeding, it’s not something that’s easily let go. It’s really something that a woman feels. It’s just a different thing than, say, our smoking campaign, “Don’t smoke”. There wasn’t that kind of reaction to that as there kind of has been to the encouragement to breastfeed.

 

Kemi: You mentioned something briefly—you talked about what would have been unthinkable in your generation. So generationally-speaking, have our attitudes changed over the years? I’m Generation X, so I’m just wondering if the Baby Boomer generation and going back a bit, did they hold different attitudes toward breastfeeding?

 

RM: Maybe not different attitudes as much as, when I was a young mom, it was during the time that La Leche League was very, very active. We were growing by leaps and bounds in the United States. I was part of a La Leche League mothers support group—that’s how I got into La Leche League. I just stayed. It’s a long time ago, my daughter is 34 now. And I just… we felt supported through that.

 

I think now young mothers have many, many ways that they can be supported by breastfeeding and they’re not necessarily going to the support groups. They go to the Internet, they read books—there is more support for the most part, on the health-professional side, but on the other hand, sometimes there isn’t. I don’t know that young mothers are making their decisions to breastfeed and getting their support in different ways than when I was a mother.

 

Kemi: Why is getting support… I understand this now as a mom, but maybe for some of our listeners … why is it important to get support for breastfeeding?

 

RM: Because breastfeeding is a daily activity—you do it 24/7. It’s not just reading a book that will get you what you need when the baby is crying or fussy or you have a problem with your breast in some way. It’s like needing information when you need it. Needing support when you need it. Maybe not being able to wait until the next doctor’s appointment to say, ‘by the way I have this problem, what can I do about it?’

 

I think the support angle is really, really important. WABA saw that at the beginning, because one of the first taskforces was a Mother Support Task Force. Just about two or three years ago, WABA started a global initiative for mother support through the Mother Support Task Force, and about two years ago we started an electronic newsletter—every three months—that’s called the Mother Support Task Force eNewsletter. In that newsletter, we try to put in as many ways that mothers can be supported across all kinds of ranges of support mothers can receive—but they do need support.

 

Kemi: Given your work with WABA and La Leche League, I am sure that you travel quite a bit. In your experience, which countries have you found to be most supportive of breastfeeding mothers?

 

RM: In a sense, it’s probably—for me—the developing countries. They see breastfeeding as a natural thing to do. The flipside to that is that, even though you may say—we started a child survivorship project in Guatemala and Honduras quite a few years ago—“Why are you doing this in Guatemala and Honduras don’t they breastfeed?” They do, but they weren’t doing “Optimal Breastfeeding.”

 

Kemi: What is Optimal Breastfeeding?

 

RM: Optimal Breastfeeding would be exclusive breastfeeding—just the breast for six months, then the introduction of complementary feeding of solids and breastfeeding for, according to the WHO and UNICEF—we in La Leche League don’t recommend a duration of breastfeeding—but documents that have come out of WHO and UNICEF do say two years and beyond.

 

Kemi: The World Health Organization and UNICEF recommend that you breastfeed for two years and beyond?

 

RM: Yes, for many reasons. For women in developing countries that aren’t using another contraceptive breastfeeding does serve many mothers as a natural child-spacing method. And it does keep that baby a baby longer—so he or she doesn’t have to compete with a brand-new baby and the mother can give attention to that baby for longer.

 

Kemi: Now Rebecca, what is WABA and how did it come to be?

 

RM: WABA is the World Alliance For Breastfeeding Action. I hope I get my dates right, and I think I did because they’re celebrating their 50^th anniversary this year. In probably January or February of 1991, UNICEF called a meeting of organizations and individuals who promoted and supported breastfeeding to New York City to say, “What can we do? We really need to keep working on breastfeeding on an international level.” Out of that meeting came the idea to form an international network and WABA was formed at that meeting.

 

Kemi: What sorts of situations specifically does the organization address?

 

RM: The organization addresses breastfeeding first and foremost, and then anything that affects breastfeeding. One of the areas that WABA has moved into in the last year or two is the whole gender aspect and how gender and the treatment of women and women’s roles around the world affects their breastfeeding success. They are doing gender training now for—they just did a gender training for men recently. That’s one area that WABA has gotten into.

 

They also have moved somewhat into the HIV/AIDS area. There is a taskforce on HIV/AIDS and WABA, last May, sponsored a HIV/AIDS-breastfeeding-child-survival Conference in Toronto with York University. They were also active in the International AIDS conference, so that is another area we are moving into because it does affect breastfeeding around the world.

 

Kemi: Sure. You mentioned you’re the point person for the Mother Support Task Force and you mentioned HIV/AIDS task force. What are some of the other task forces?

 

RM: One is research. Another one that is very, very active is Women in Work. And then another one is the Healthcare Practices—they’re looking at childbirth and breastfeeding. And I mentioned HIV and infant feeding. Those are the main ones we have.

 

Again, there is also, in conjunction with the Global Initiative for Mother Support, there is also a Global Initiative for Father Support. We have pulled that into our electronic newsletter. There is a section in our newsletter for father support. We’re trying to bring in all the ways mothers are supported, but we’re also highlighting the fact that women do need support.

 

Kemi: Sure. One of the ways mothers are supported is through fathers.

 

RM: Yes, and they can be not supported through fathers if the father isn’t real supportive.

 

Kemi: In your work with WABA or with La Leche League, do you get involved in policy issues?

 

RM: Not totally. WABA has a steering committee that is in zones around the world and so, like there is a person from the North American regional zone that’s elected by the WABA general assembly for the steering committee. There are right now six or seven members of the steering committee. We just elected from the North American region Miram LeBach who will be the representative on the steering committee for North America. The one who represents Europe is Felicity Savage-King. The people who are on the steering committee and are internationally-known for breastfeeding work.

 

Kemi: With the Mother Support Task Force, what types of support, specifically say in North America, do you provide?

 

RM: Mostly you can say that since I am with La Leche League and… it’s really wearing these hats all at the same time. I am a La Leche League person, but I am also coordinator of the Mother Support Task Force. Any time that I can let La Leche League members or leaders know about the Mother Support Task Force or the electronic newsletter and anytime that there’s something coming from the La Leche League ranks as it were that would be important for the Mother Support Task Force newsletter, then I can go that direction as well.

 

I didn’t mention and I need to mention that eNewsletter is in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

 

Kemi: Fantastic!

 

RM: We feel that that is the best part of it—online you can find this information in four different languages.

 

Kemi: Well great! So for a mom who needs support with everyday issues that arise—things like employment and breastfeeding or maybe not feeling comfortable breastfeeding in public or just the normal things that come up—where might she find support?

 

RM: I think the first—I’ll wear my La Leche League hat right now—I think the first thing would be for her to go to the La Leche League website and on that website she’ll find leaders and groups both in the United States and other countries around the world where we do have a La Leche League presence. [She’ll find] email addresses or phone numbers.

 

We also have on the website the possibility of a woman, anywhere in the world, filling out a health form in English or Spanish and that health form would be responded to by a La Leche League leader. We also have a mother-to-mother support forum that anyone can log into and those are divided into different categories. For example, there is a forum on mothers who breastfeed and work. So for my La Leche League hat, that would be where I would go.

 

WABA is more of a broad-issue organization. It isn’t not like you would go to WABA for breastfeeding help.

 

IBFAN, of course, is the Core Partner that deals with the code—compliance for the code, training for the code, what’s going on around the world for the code. So it’s like these different Core Partners fill specific areas for WABA.

 

Kemi: Since you have your La Leche League hat on, I have to ask you: La Leche League is celebrating it’s 50^th anniversary, right?

 

RM: That’s right.

 

Kemi: What do you have planned?

 

RM: We already had a picnic in August. That was at the very same park where two of the founders were attending a picnic. They were talking about breastfeeding and they were breastfeeding and mothers were coming up to them and asking questions and they decided to bring in some of their friends and have a meeting in a home and invite neighbors and other friends. That happened October 17, so we just celebrated that date. This Saturday, on the 28^th, we are going to have a celebration dinner that will be our re-launching of the 50^th. In July 2007, we will have an international conference to culminate the 50^th anniversary.

 

Kemi: Wow! It sounds like you’ve got a lot going on.

 

RM: Always!

 

Kemi: Rebecca, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate the support you’re providing for breastfeeding mothers as a breastfeeding mom myself. I am certainly realizing the need for support. Sometimes breastfeeding is not easy and a lot of people don’t say that. When you have the support behind you, you can do it and you can make that commitment to your child.

 

RM: Can I make one plug here? It’s really important that a pregnant woman gets information and knows where to go if she has questions after the baby comes. As a mother who did go to support group meetings, I think if I went when I was pregnant and heard all of that information I would have been better off when the baby came.

 

Kemi: Yes, that’s very important. Rebecca, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

 

RM: Thank you so much. Bye bye.