After all these years of writing about attachment parenting on this Web site, it dawned on me a few days ago that we’ve never actually defined the phrase “attachment parenting”. This point was reinforced when a new friend of mine commented that he’d read through the articles on this site, but that he still didn’t really get what attachment parenting actually was, even though he agreed completely on what it appeared we were using as our basic approach to parenting.

And so, let us define what we mean when we talk about attachment parenting — a phrase that we didn’t coin, by the way. I think William and Martha Sears, authors of The Attachment Parenting Book, might have come up with it, but in any case, it’s a good name for our general philosophy of parenting!

First off, the main elements of attachment parenting to us are: extended breast feeding, co-sleeping, non-violence towards children, and carrying or otherwise being with babies (especially newborns) every hour of the day. You can tell us attachment parenting types, actually, by the slings we use to tote our babies. :-)

Underlying these ideas is the basic philosophy that parenting is about really loving each stage of your child’s life, from newborn to toddler, infant to kid, child to teen.

Rather than push newborns into a crib and separate room as fast as possible, attachment parenting folk believe that…