Actually, that particular "stay at home mom" made $35K/year for six years as a part time design consultant from home, while taking care of a child.
I agree that some attachment parent folks can be zealots (and if you look around you will see that there are people who are against attachment parenting with as much zeal and vigor) but please tell me where that occurred in that particular essay. (?) It seems that she goes out of her way to try to be diplomatic, even if it's obvious where her heart lies.
I also agree that a sense of independence in children should be fostered. But at what age? What about when the child is a six month old baby? What is the benefit of day care at that point for the baby? Kids don't really start to play with each other until they are age three or so. I think preschool for a few hours a day is great for the 2-4 age for socialization purposes, but don't you think that 8+ hours a week five days a week might be a bit draining for the kid? How does being taken care of by an unrelated woman being paid $10 an hour (as caring as they may very well be) make a kid more independent than being taken care of by mom? Why does a two year old "need" to be independent from his parents for 40+ hours a week (and likely actually with them for significantly less than 40 waking hours a week?)
And since when is staying at home for a woman (or man)) a privilege? In my parents parenting years, that was the norm. And my dad was a blue collar guy working at a paper mill, not some rich lawyer or mid-level gov't worker. My blue collar in-laws pulled it off too. I bet often times, it's not because the family is any more financially well off than the next person, it's because they're willing to go without $300 bottles of liquor or $150 meals out or $100 concert tickets or European vacations or $40K cars, or $800K houses in the city when a house in the boring suburbs is heaps cheaper.
Other than financial reasons, is there really any reason for one parent
not to be home with a child until they are two or three? Please show me the studies that prove turning your three and under child over to full time daycare is beneficial to the child.
Okay I read that article by the "design consultant" i.e. stay-at-home mom.
Babies have, indeed, become a sort of enemy to be vanquished by the mother. Crying must be ignored so as to show the baby who is boss, and a basic premise in the relationship is that every effort should be made to force the baby to conform to the mother?s wishes.
for millions of years newborn babies have been held close to their mothers from the moment of birth and that just because in recent history we?ve taken this to be optional (or inconvenient)
The violent tearing apart of the mother-child continuum, so strongly established during the phases that took place in the womb may understandably result in depression for the mother, as well as agony for the infant.
It seems to me that attachment parents always feel it necessary to demonize those who don't subscribe to their views. Rather than teaching children to live and grow independently *and* with their parents, we're violently tearing apart the mother-child continuum. And attachment parents are always doing the attaching for honorable, noble reasons and never because they are privileged stay-at-home moms smothering their children in an urge to be needed, necessary and important.
I acknowledge that attachment parents are defensive because they take so much abuse, but I don't sympathize with them any more than I sympathize with people who run up their credit cards and then complain they're drowning in debt, to use one outta-left-field analogy.
