Detachment Parenting

by Bethany Saltman, August 02, 2007

I am reading a book called Becoming Attached which details the story/theory behind so-called Dr. Sears’-style “attachment parenting” (i.e. sleep with your child in your bed until the child decides it’s time to leave, etc.). In fact, attachment theory, hard-won as it is, is what we can thank for the totally obvious (so we thought) idea that babies need their mommies, or at least some kind of primary caretaker who is there for them. Mommies are not just food-dispensers. Babies don’t just love their mommies because they fill their tummies. Mommies are more than boobs. Babies are not robots. Isn’t it amazing that until the 1960’s us Westerners really thought that babies could be separated from their moms and be fine? Hospitals used to not allow parents to visit their sick kids!!! Remember the monkey and the wire mama experiment, where the baby monkeys clung to the terry-cloth covered wire monkey even though the wire one gave them the food? That’s part of the attachment thing. The babies liked the warmth just because it was more comfy.

ANYway, reality is much more interesting and less condemning and rigid than Dr. Sears and his barefoot nurse-wife Martha (born-again Christians, by the way) and their ten million children. The book explores the humanity of the researchers, their own “issues,” the in-fighting, and the experiments themselves, and their results. This is where things get a little spooky. Most readerly parents have heard of the “Strange Situation” experiment where Mary Ainsworth confirmed the different attachment styles of babies to their moms (secure/avoidant/ambivalent) based this simple experiment where a baby is left in a room with a stranger then reunited with the mom. The way the child reunites is studied microscopically and then codified in terms of attachment. Obviously, there’s much more to it than that. But it’s the kind of thing everyone wants to repeat with friends as a parlor game: let’s see how anxious our babies get when we leave them with the neighbor they’ve never met!!! Let’s see if, even though I have been leaving my darling with a babysitter since she was 5 months old, she still loves me the best! What a blast!

Perhaps the elephant in the room right now is that fact that I am reading a book. Indeed. I am. How did that happen?

I feel like something has shifted. I have cut back on work – working the hours I am paid to work (for the most part, of course, or as much as I can and still get the job done – I can’t believe how much I feel like I need to justify working my agreed-upon hours. What’s wrong with me???), which has made work much more fun. And it has given me more room in the day to be a person, a person with a child, a person with a child who also loves to read and sit and even cook! Wow! So I have set up some rules, mostly about technology, and the main one is being violated right now.

The main rule is to only have my computer on between the hours of 7 and 7 (It is now 6:45 am). Or even 6 in the evening is preferable. And no weekends. No email, no web browsing. No work. Except, of course, weekends when I explicitly MUST work, and then it’s clear that I am indeed working and so it’s ok and even a pleasure. This may not seem monumental, but since I am getting up so dang early (5) to sit and shower, I still have an hour at least to READ before Azzie gets up, usually around 7:30. And then in the evening she goes to bed around 8 and I have another hour to READ before I go to bed between 9 and 10.

Very civilized.

In Buddhism we hear a lot about detachment, in the sense of seeing through what FEELS real. NOT not feeling. Just not attaching. Thoughts can be seen as the illusory ghosts that they are, powerful because of the power we give them.

I feel like I am trying to do the real work of attachment parenting (including parenting myself) from this perspective. I get all wrapped up in whether or not Azzie reunites with me the way Mary Ainsworth says she should. That’s normal. And it’s ok. But don’t fall to the other side of not caring or paying attention! Aaaah!!! Duality!!! Back and forth.

Attachment parenting COULD be called Detachment parenting. Meaning: See your child, let her go. See her over and over. Let her go. She is not a thing separate from you. She is not a thing. She is not a thing. She is not a thing. And when you are really connected, there is no reunion.