I follow Time magazine on Pinterest and so saw the now-infamous cover-shot of Jamie Lynn Grumlet nursing her three-year-old son--mother and child both standing and gazing solemnly at the camera--while my first cup of morning coffee was still cooling last Thursday morning.** I took a moment to gaze at their expressions (hers perhaps a tad defiant, his both possessive and nonplussed), then scanned down to read the cover-story title: "Are You Mom Enough? Why Attachment Parenting Drives Some Mothers to Extremes--And How Dr. Bill Sears Became Their Guru."
Immediately I thought, "What fresh misogynistic hell is this?"
Understand: I had no problem with the fact that the nursing child in the photo was almost four years old--though that would not have been a workable option for my family. That he was standing on a chair in order to nurse gave me pause, as did the incongruously surreal phrase "God of Cricket" hovering near Mrs. Grumlet's clear-eyed gaze. However, it was the smug invitation to woman-on-woman judgment in that title that actually sent me screaming over the edge. Motherhood is hard enough work and women judge themselves harshly enough already on how well they're doing it; we do not need a for-profit media machine standing on the sidelines helping us feel worse about the job that we are doing, pitting those of us on the front lines against each other.
My first son was almost nine pounds when he was born and I gave birth to him without drugs. When push came to really-big-push, I missed my epidural window-of-opportunity and so gave birth "naturally." For the record: this did not feel beautiful and life-affirming, it felt painful and terrifying--but the experience does put me, however unwillingly, in the "attachment parenting" camp.
Similarly: I nursed my first son until his first birthday and then promptly weaned him. Later, this child would be identified as having multisystem developmental disorder. All I knew at the point of weaning was that, physically, he required about six hours of sleep a day and spent much of his waking time in a state of tantruming terror. At first, our nursing and subsequent co-sleeping gave me an opportunity to rest during our otherwise-frantic days. As the months progressed though, the clerestory window in my bedroom began to take on the look and feel of a prison window, and I really began to believe that if I didn't get some uninterrupted sleep away from this child I might try to climb the wall and jump free.
When my second son came along, I believed that I was a seasoned enough mother to nurse for the long haul--two or three years, whatever he needed. This one was also a difficult-to-soothe child who didn't seem to require much sleep--but he was different, too: fewer actual phobias, more life-threatening infections. Breast milk is supposed to promote autoimmune antibodies and this was a kid who seemed to need all that he could get, so of course, at 14 months, after two hospitalizations and perhaps four weeks total good health, my second son weaned himself, cold turkey. He woke up one day, pointed at the solid food that I always offered and that he always adamantly refused, uttered his first clear word ("cup"), and settled in to chow down complacently next to his brother.
So why share all of this? I don't know about you but I need a strong drink whenever I reflect back on my early years of parenting--and that's before I think about the additional hospitalizations, the years of arguing with my school district about what educational services and accommodations my children required, the three years of homeschooling, and the fact that parenthood has taken me out of the job market long enough that I am finding it challenging to transition back smoothly...
I share it because, given the option, I would make all of these choices again a second time. Not because of a philosophy, but because now I can see the very-positive results that came from them: I feel blessed to have the two children that I have.
That being (very gratefully said), would I tell someone else that it was a good idea to make the same decisions that I've made? Not necessarily. My best decisions for my family are not necessarily going to be the best solutions for you--unless you also have a son with an autoimmune disorder, a son with a developmental disorder, and a problem with anxiety (in which case we should absolutely go out for dinner together sometime).
According to the ["What's Your Parenting Style?"](http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/10/quiz-whats-your-parenting-style/ "Website: Time's "What's Your Parenting Style?" quiz") quiz that accompanies Time's "Are You Mom Enough?" article, though, I am an "attachment parent," and "mom enough." No thanks: I reject the moniker. Yes, I breastfed, co-slept, tried to use a sling (my children abhorred the sling), refrained from hitting my children, and homeschooled--but these decisions were choices I made based not on any philosophy that I was following blindly, but by measuring the options I had available against the dynamic, complex needs of my family. To call me an attachment parent is to change these painstaking decisions into foregone conclusions, thus ignoring the thought and struggle that went into each one.
What's more, for Time to imply through its inflammatory title "Are You Mom Enough?" that attachment parenting is some unattainable moral imperative for only the truly committed (or truly mislead), and for Time to then step back from the media groundswell this creates in (one can only assume) the hopes that women will step in and berate each others' parenting choices--all so that Time can move more product--strikes me as behavior that is both calculating and cruel. After all, every family is its own dynamic, complex, challenging structure. The only message that the media should be sending to mothers this Mother's Day is that there are many, many ways to raise healthy children, and that what is vitally important is for families to discover, implement, and embrace the solutions that work best for them.
