Attachment parenting

Attachment parenting (AP) is a parenting philosophy that proposes methods which aim to promote the attachment of mother and infant not only by maximal maternal empathy and responsiveness but also by continuous bodily closeness and touch. The term "attachment parenting" has been coined by the American pediatrician William Sears.

In family sociology, attachment parenting is considered to be the most striking manifestation of intensive mothering resp. New momism. The doctrine has hence been targeted by criticism from a host of objectors.

Attachment parenting is only one of many responsiveness and love oriented parenting philosophies that entered the pedagogical mainstream after World War II, and it owes many of its ideas to older teachings, such as Benjamin Spock's influential handbook Baby and Child Care (1946). Spock had mothers advised to raise their infants according to their own common sense and with plenty of physical contact – a guideline that radically broke with the preceding doctrines of L. Emmett Holt and John B. Watson; the book became a bestseller, and Spock's new child rearing concept greatly influenced the upbringing of the post war generations.

Thirty years later, Jean Liedloff caused a stir by a "Continuum concept" that she presented to the public in a book of the same title (1975). In Venezuela, Liedhoff had studied Ye'kuana people, and later she recommended to Western mothers to nurse and to wear their infants and to share their bed with them. She argued that infants, speaking in terms of evolution, have not arrived in the modernity yet, so that today's way of child care – with bottle feeding, use of cribs and baby carriages, etc. – does not meet their needs. Later, authors such as Sharon Heller und Meredith Small contributed further ethnopediatric insights.

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