From Love to Burnout: How Attachment Parenting Can Take a Toll on Mom
I feel both guilt and gratitude, while gazing at my son nestled in his daddy’s arm, for an afternoon nap.
Guilty because my boy is such an incredible soul, and yet in moments of total exhaustion, I long for someone else to care for him. Guilty for wanting a break from the responsibility of caring for a newborn, twenty-four-seven.
But simultaneously, I’m grateful for a healthy THRIVING, baby, and abundantly blessed in that he and his father have such a warm and trusting relationship.
I know my exhaustion isn’t my son’s fault. My lack of “village” isn’t his fault.
The fact that we moved across the county, and are living in a new place, away from our families of origin, again, are not circumstances that are his to own.
And lately, I've been reckoning with what it means to be an emotionally mature mother. I believe one such marker is the ability to recognize my feelings, and moments of desperation, depletion, and inner turbulence, are not actually about my baby.
He’s not “doing” anything to me. Nothing is wrong with his needs.
The need for milk, every forty-five minutes, the need to be reassured several times throughout the night, that momma is there, and has milk if he needs it, and the need to be touching momma or daddy’s skin for naps during the day must be met, in order for him to develop a sense of safety and security in this strange world outside the womb.
Intellectually, I get it.
But if this is all so biologically appropriate, and necessary, for my baby, why does it feel so shocking to my body, overstimulating to my nervous system, and mentally draining?
As I ponder this question, a few primary, complex, reasons come forward.
I’m sharing them with you, Momma, to help you feel a little less crazy, if your journey with attachment parenting has felt much harder(and less “natural”), than you anticipated.
But a couple things to note here, before we go further, let’s define what I mean by “attachment parenting.”
When I use the phrase, “attachment parenting,” I’m referring to a concept initially developed by William and Martha Sears. They propose 7 Baby B’s, for raising children in accordance with Nature, to foster secure attachment. The 7 Baby B’s are:
Birth-Bonding
Breastfeeding
Babywearing
Bedding Close to Baby
Belief in the Language Value of Your Baby’s Cry
Beware of Baby Trainers
Balance
These are not hard and fast rules, but rather tools to help foster strong bonds with your children, from the start of your relationship, that will last a lifetime.
Additionally, before we dig in, I recognize that many variations of the role, “mother,” exist.
This article is written from my limited experience and knowledge as a stay-at-home biological mother (and step-mom) on the attachment parenting path. Unfortunately, for the adoptive momma, childless step-mom, or other non-biological-primary-caregivers, what follows, might not be entirely relevant.
That being said though, I encourage those of you in one of the less conventional situations, to read on, as likely we all share similar feelings around the role of child rearing, in the West.
If you’re desiring to nurture the tiny humans in your care, in a gentle and developmentally informed manner, and have wondered why it’s been more intense than you had imagined, I’d wager that the below discussion will, at least in part, resonate.
So with that, let’s dive into the top reasons why mothers, intent on providing for their baby’s needs in a way that fosters secure attachment, are exhausted and disillusioned by the day-to-day tasks of this parenting paradigm.
1. Our culture’s high value placed on independence undermines attachment informed parenting practices
As a woman growing up in an individualistic culture, I learned early on (without ever having to be told) that being able to take care of oneself, independent from others was preferred, rewarded, and a sign of maturity.
I remember receiving a special item from my grandparents, when I was three or four years old, when my mother went back to work, after the birth of my little sister.
I hated that my mom left every morning, and therefore, the mornings were a tearful endeavor for me.
As I recall it, in hopes to make this transition smoother, after going a number of days without crying when my mother left for work, I was “awarded” a bright blue Cookie Monster (a character from the iconic Sesame Street TV show) cup. Since, I remember receiving the cup, this reward must have “worked” to quelch the morning tears.
What stands out most to me from this memory, is that it was preferred that I turned off, and buried, my emotions about being away from my primary caregiver.
To do so was a sign of “growing up.”
The education here was that being away from my mother, because she had to go, shouldn't bother me. But it DID bother me, and that bothered the adults.
I don’t tell this story to shame my caregivers, or judge the decisions they made. I’m simply pointing to a larger societal issue regarding nurturing little ones in the West, which is: if their developmentally appropriate needs and behaviors are inconvenient to us, or make us feel uncomfortable, we seek to alter their behavior, rather than our own.
Especially, when it concerns matters of independence – sleeping alone at night, self-entertaining, and napping in a separate space from mom/dad/caregiver.
“Although people talk as if you can force babies to learn independence, this is an imaginary outcome. If you isolate babies, the opposite happens—they become whiney and needy or quiet and torn up inside, in both cases preoccupied with themselves…Making babies stress reactive from undercare may be a good way to build an easily distressed personality and create a society of self-concerned folks,” offers Darcia F. Narvaez Ph.D. in an article for Psychology Today.
But since many of us were not parented from this way of thinking (I was raised in the generation, and in a religious context, that hailed the “cry it out method”), offering constant skin-to-skin contact, anticipating needs before baby expresses them, and surrendering to the dependance of your infant, feels totally foreign.
I still struggle to wrap my head around why I can’t go pee, without my ten month old crying unless he is in the bathroom right next to me. I know I’m not alone in this.
2. The myth that there’s such a thing as making parenthood “convenient”
New parents today, are marketed and sold a plethora of products and contraptions to make their parenting “easier,” and their babies more self-reliant, as early as possible.
Advertisements for machines to hold, rock, and bounce your baby, so you don’t have to, clutter your inbox all throughout pregnancy.
Super absorbent diapers promise to lessen the frequency with which you have to change baby.
Books on “sleep training,” appeal to parents just looking to get back to sleeping through the night, rapidly.
And getting your baby to feed on an “every-four-hour schedule,” as the pediatrician recommends, is certainly more convenient than every twenty, thirty, forty minutes until who knows how old.
But for those of us questioning all the plastic, all the electronic saucers, light up floor gyms, rigid feeding schedules, and “12 hour leak proof” diapers, and who intuitively sense their baby is designed to stay close day and night, this presents a dilemma.
That being that the alternative requires more of your time, attention, and presence. And might I add, it is HIGHLY INCONVENIENT.
Waking up at midnight, then at two and three o’clock, to take your newborn potty, because you desire to help them eliminate as dignified and naturally, as possible, (elimination communication), is at odds with your ideal of getting to sleep eight consecutive hours per night.
Being available for your baby to eat from your breast whenever, and wherever, they please, even if it’s while trying to take a shower (this is a regular occurrence at our house), is a quite comical juggling act and a far cry from my idea of convenience.
Strapping baby to me for every nap, especially as he ages, requires ninja skills and hours of silence, as he’s easily woken by loud noises (someone opening the front door for an example).
In my house, nap time (during the week when I’m alone with the kids) is not when I’m going to be deep cleaning the shower, or vacuuming, or even chatting on the phone with a friend, as some might be able to do if their baby was sleeping in a separate space.
See, parenting without the baby “thingies,” fixed feeding windows, and sleep schedules invites you to completely reorient your approach to everyday life.
As opposed to squeezing baby into your previous way of existing, becoming a mother with the goal of building secure attachment, asks you to uproot your whole relationship to time, space, productivity, and yourself.
Coming to this realization has been a steep adjustment, personally, since the birth of my son.
To shift my stories around such things as slowness, being a value rather than a vice, and to open my heart to consider the world through my little one’s lens rather than just my own feels like I stepped off a plane in a country I’ve never visited and don’t know the language.
For the most part, the mothers I witnessed growing up, lacked awareness around attachment parenting concepts, and the needs of infants according to developmental psychology. They seemed afraid that if they held their baby too much, nursed it to sleep, and god-forbid permitted him/her to sleep in their bed at night the child would grow up to be clingy, have poor sleeping/eating habits, and never achieve a sense of “independence” (as we discussed in the previous section).
This leads me to the next, and final, key reason I believe young women seeking to go the way of attachment parenting, find themselves flailing and face burnout.
3. Mothers today have not been on the receiving end of attachment parenting practices, or witnessed women in their communities, growing up, who attuned to Nature’s way of child tending
In 2023, the talk about “village,” in the online mom-space, is highly trendy. And for good reason.
For the momma living away from her family of origin, for various reasons, a self-sacrificing community, willing to support her choice to babywear, co-sleep, practice elimination communication, nurse on demand etc., isn’t always readily (more often not) available.
So she finds herself desiring to walk in the wisdom of her ancestors long ago, where these practices – bedsharing, feeding according to the infant’s needs (both physical and emotional) and keeping baby in the arms of many loving adults, the majority of the time – were more the norm than the expectation, but is without the village of support around her, to show her the way.
She’s void of a model for how it’s possible to support one’s baby in establishing secure attachment, while also being deeply nourished in the mothering role by other women, further down the path.
In my own experience, as a child, I didn’t see women baby wearing, corporal punishment was the norm, and co-sleeping was considered a big “no-no.”
When I became a mother, I realized that I didn’t just need other moms around me, but specifically a village who valued staying in sync with, and honoring rather than pathologizing, Nature’s design for the mother baby dyad, in the most critical time of development — for both myself and my child.
I’m thankful I did connect to a community of such like-minded women, in my first few months postpartum, before moving across the country. And also still grieving the loss of that circle of sisters.
I’m six months into the relocation, at the time of this writing, and still in search of the sort of village I tasted prior to departing Oregon.
Pre-motherhood, I didn’t question making such life altering decisions according to the desires of my immediate nuclear family. But now, I see the problematic nature, from an emotional and physical health perspective, for mothers in failing to consider the level of support available to them, when considering where to reside.
For many modern mothers in the West, they spend a higher percentage of time, on a day-to-day basis, than their child’s(children’s) father, tending the needs of their young.
And even when another adult is present, many mothers report that they still assume more of the caregiving tasks, than their partner.
With mothers bearing a heavier load of responsibility in the realm of childcare/and household management postpartum depression, burnout, resentment, and physical and emotional depletion is plaguing up to twenty percent of mothers (that’s two hundred thousand women, out of every million).
That’s too many. But I also suspect those numbers are far too low. I’d wager many women, suffering from postpartum depression, don’t report their experiences.
Women without conscious, intentional, community to hold them, without wise women to guide them, and maidens to witness and support them, are at higher risk of experiencing compromised vitality (physical and emotional), in their postpartum time (one to three years after giving birth). And are likely going to find the attachment parenting path more tiring.
In coming to terms with this, I’ve been called deeper into my own healing journey around my upbringing, and found more compassion for myself, for the moments when attachment parenting feels so dang exhausting.
It’s also called into the light the flimsy nature of placing such a high value on personal wants, rather than on where and how to foster a village around me, that will keep me accountable to my growth and maturity as a mother.
Even when we're seeking to follow Nature’s blueprint for childrearing, we’re not guaranteed a path without twists and turns, bumps, and weeds. For all of that, is why we must prioritize moving away from the nuclear family model and get ourselves around more women who are walking a similar mothering road.
As the adage goes, “it takes a village to raise a mother,” but not just any mother, a vital and thriving mother, which is what every baby deserves.
XOXO
Erika
