This is what we shoot for.

This article was featured on Peaceful Parenting this morning. I liked it because it backs up a lot of things that I've thought for a long time, and just made a lot of sense. The main idea is that societies that are, or were, without the influences that drive modern mainstream society, parent a very different way than mainstream parents in the industrialized world do. Also interesting is that there is a major difference between hunter/gatherer types, who are more into what we in the US call "Attachment Parenting", and warrior types who practice very similar parenting to the mainstream people in the industrialized world. The idea is that the practices used by the warrior societies beget angry mean people who will be ruthless in battle, whereas those practices used by the hunter/gatherer types are more apt to create people who are peaceful, community-oriented, and just generally good to deal with. I had never seen it laid out so concisely like that, but it makes perfect sense to me.

I think one of the biggest problems I have, and have always had, with mainstream parenting practices, is that they are simply not appropriate for our species on a primal level. Human babies were not meant to sleep through the night without waking up to eat, at only a few months of age. They were not meant to entertain themselves or soothe themselves, or sleep all alone from birth. They were not meant to cry without being responded to. It's just not the way we evolved, but that's the way mainstream society wants us to treat our babies. What kind of sense does this make? It doesn't make a bit of sense to me. I can tell you that much.

This brings about another point that has occurred to me often over the years. I hear so many people agonizing over various parenting choices, and saying how hard it was to do this thing they thought they had to do. My question to them is always, "Then why do it? Surely you have a choice, right?" This is like the woman I know who had three shots of tequila before her son's circumcision appointment because she was so nervous about having it done (I would need more than tequila to make it seem like a good idea to do that to my kid, personally). I have heard numerous accounts of how hard it was for various friends and acquaintances to listen to their baby cry for hours on end during what they call "sleep training". I know countless moms who have agonized over the decision to stop breastfeeding because some pediatrician, or other person, told them to. Myself, I remember feeling like I was doing something very wrong the first time I bought formula for Orren. I literally looked over my shoulder repeatedly the whole time I was on the formula aisle at Wal Mart, and hoped we didn't run into anyone we knew. (Of course, we ran into half of Thak's platoon between there and the register. Murphy's Law of buying stuff you don't want people to know you have.) It was another two days before I gave him any of it, and the last time I nursed him, knowing it would be the last time because Thak had finally put his foot down and said no more breastfeeding after that, I felt very very wrong about the whole thing. In my experience, any decision that doesn't sit well is an inferior decision, and inferior decisions are inferior because they are not appropriate for our species on a biological or primal level.

Is this to say that Thak and I are perfect attachment parents? Not even close. We have areas that could be improved, and we own them. Breastfeeding is my achilles heel as a parent. It always has been. Chai has received four ounces of formula today in addition to what breastmilk I am able to provide for him. A couple ounces of that breastmilk even came from a bottle (that's because I pump while he's asleep since I'm trying to boost my supply, so that maybe one day he won't need formula anymore). He has nursed a lot today, too, though. We're trying. He doesn't usually sleep in the bed with us, but in his own little bed right next to my side. That, I do feel right about, though. That means it's the right choice for us. I do not believe that Chai is sleeping alone, because he is within arm's reach of me, and when he cries, I'm holding him within a matter of seconds. We do spend the majority of the day in physical contact with him (either holding him or wearing him), but we don't do as much skin-to-skin time as some other families may. We're not perfect attachment parents, but we go with what decisions feel good to us on the most basic level. That's really what it comes down to. The decisions that you won't feel a need to defend, that you genuinely feel good about, that you're proud of at the end of the day, are good decisions, and usually go with what our species needs on a primal level.