Feminism and AP

It would be easy to have a blog that was all about ranting, but... it might not be healthy. But I have to bring up this topic which is apparently a hot ticket lately in the online world of discussions. Erica Jong recently published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which she went on and on about how Attachment Parenting is harmful to mothers and their children. Now everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion. I can only share mine.

I'd actually never heard of 'Attachment Parenting' a year ago. I had read Dr. Sears so I must have seen the phrase but it never stuck in my mind. Then I moved and went on Meetup looking for mommy-child groups in the area and found an AP group. It sounded like the other moms in the group and I shared a number of parenting choices, such as co-sleeping, cloth diapering, breastfeeding and babywearing. I had done all of those things though not because they followed some doctrine but just because they felt right. And it always feels good to be part of a group.

I still do plan on blogging about each of these topics, just not now. My sleepy brain these days is limiting the length, depth and clarity of my posts. But I've been on the other side of the fence - giving advice to parents in my role as an educator. And now as a parent I can honestly say that there really is no one-size-fits-all solution for anything. I do believe however, that women do become 'mothers' when they have children. Hormones, evolution, there's all sorts of reasoning (and it's fascinating). But mothering has to feel right.

Jong writes that Attachment Parenting is "a prison for mothers." That sounds so strange to me. I think perhaps I am just a different kind of feminist (for while I'm sure Jong would scoff, I have been called a feminist many times). I don't think that being a feminist means that women must put on the pants, get full-time, high-achieving jobs, put the kids in daycare, hire house cleaners, and marry men that will cook. (Doesn't that sound ridiculous? As ridiculous as the opposite extreme, I think.) I think that being a feminist means believing that women are free to choose how they lives their lives. At least that's how I live, and I would like to share that with my daughters.