THAT Time Cover

The one captioned, "Are You Mom Enough? Why attachment parenting drives some mothers to extremes - and how Dr. Bill Sears became their guru."  It's a photo of a purported to be 3 year old (nearly four from what I've read) standing on a footstool so as to be able to nurse his mother's left breast. 

I admit that I found the photos disturbing on several levels - Conventional Wisdom and the Bible remind that there is "a time for every season" and I seriously doubt this IS that time. That mother is quite possibly clinically insne.  She defiantly defends her position by saying that her mother nursed her until she was six years old!  I think there's something fishy about both of them sexually.  Child abuse also flickered through my mind.

Enjoy your 15 minutes, Toots. 

Pediatric doctors encourage breast feeding for the first six months.  And bless their hearts, 75% of new mothers do start , but only 44% can stick to it for six months. 

I read the article and was amazed to learn that the mother is never to let go of her child.  She is to keep it in a sling, on her body, from dawn to dusk and then to put the kid in the parents bed so that they can all sleep together.  I thought, "Poor kid - already been in the womb nine months - no freedom now, even though you're out."

As it happened, this issue was lying face up on the coffee table while we were entertaining friends.  John (father of a 16 month) commented on it.  He said that he and his wife have a friend who is doing attacement parenting.  He said, "She's worn out, you can see in her eyes that she doesn't have a life, but she's determined to do it.  Her baby eats whenever it's hungry; no schedule at all," looking quite disapproving.  

"Raffish," a medical doctor, pointed out that bed sharing between adults and a very young child is extremely harmful to a child.  All too often, an exhausted parent (and all new parents are exhausted, 24/7) can roll over onto the child and not realize it.  Sudden Infant Death (SID) risk rises as well.  As for Sears assertion that "parents should respond immediately to their child's crying because "excess crying can damage the brain and lead to developmental disorders,"  he snorted and said, "Maybe to the parents" and flipped the magazine back onto the table.

"T" also snorted, but he said, "How disgusting!"  We had a quorum. Congratulatory nods all around.