The Three A’s of Parenting: Authoritative, Attachment, and Acceptance
Parent First Parenting: The Simplicity Principle, Part 2
If you missed The Simplicity Principle, Part 1, I am presenting a path to bring us all back to basics from the precipice of information overload and expertise-seeking overdrive.
In this culture, there will always be more: more approaches, more strategies, more trends. Often with more, however, comes less.
Less confidence.
Less clarity.
Less certainty.
Add the reality that our lives contain multiple dimensions beyond our children (sssh, don’t tell them!), and sometimes we need to remember all that really matters about parenting.
In Part 1, I broke down the massive field of child development into all you really need to know about your child. Now, in Part 2, we focus on what matters most about you and your relationship with your child.
Parenting Style
Forget all the categories the modern era of parenthood has created – like a Jeopardy board of Hell. Most of them have stigma and shame attached anyways, so let’s just throw them all out in one big cleansing trash day. Psychological research has repeatedly shown that effective parenting can be summed up in two words (most of the time): warm and firm. Like a good hug.
The amazing part of research on parenting styles is how consistent the research findings have been across decades of scientific study. (This is NOT a trend, I repeat, not a trend.) A quick recap in case your parent-muddled brain can’t remember your Intro to Psych class:
Authoritarian is like, you know, regimes that we don’t want. Overly controlling and punitive, authoritarian parenting leads to children and teenagers feeling powerless, which often converts into rebellion and risky behaviors (ironically). There is an important exception: authoritarian has been found to be the most effective style for parents raising children in high violence neighborhoods where their safety is more at risk if parents do not exert high control.
Permissive parenting is lots of warmth but low limit-setting, with indulgences galore, kind of like grandparents. The problem is that children really need limits to feel secure, so even though it seems like children would love the freedom granted by permissive parenting, they can actually feel more anxious and insecure.
Neglectful parenting is pretty much the worst of these four types because while there aren’t limits like in permissive parenting, there’s also not much warmth or emotional connection. Before you start to accuse yourself of neglecting your child when you let them play on an iPad so you can watch a trashy TV show (personal confession here), this term “neglect” refers to a pervasive pattern of neglecting children’s basic needs.
Okay here’s the good one: Authoritative. Authoritative parenting is that just-right blend of setting clear and firm limits within the context of a close, loving bond full of trust and warmth. It does not mean you and your children feel this way every second! It’s the bigger, more general experience of parenting and the parent-child relationship.
So, there you have it. Warmly connecting with your children while also setting firm and consistent limits is all you need to know about the “kind” of parent to be! Throw out the rest, and give your kids a warm, tight hug.
The Truth About Attachment
A large majority of parents form healthy, secure attachments with their children – you have very likely done the same, by doing what comes naturally to most: attending to your baby’s needs A LOT but NOT ALL of the time.
“There is no greater gift for our children than the gift of feeling loved and seen as a valuable person on their own.”
Responding to our baby’s needs to form secure attachments is not only instinctual for most with uncomplicated family histories (eg, NOT severely neglectful or abusive parents), but has also been tested across decades of psychological research. Most of us are building secure attachments with our babies in our mundane day-to-day care.
Other types of attachment are less common, and often related to abnormal circumstances such as drug use, abuse, and trauma, or significant mental illness. Yelling at your toddler in a moment of frustration or leaving your baby to cry when you have to shower does not constitute risk for a non-secure attachment.
Attachment theory and categories have been rigorously tested for decades across cultures and from many different perspectives to offer us the rare gift of scientific certainty in parenting: Interactions with our newborn and growing child are constantly building an attachment, and secure attachments is by far the most common and most typical.
“Attachment Parenting:” A Cautionary Tale
I didn’t even know about “attachment” parenting when I failed at what I now know is one of its top recommendations: baby-wearing. I tried with several different wraps, watched the how-to videos, took walks with a tentatively-wrapped baby that ended up slipping down to my stomach, sending my fragile hormones into panic mode.
With my first baby, I sobbed about it and felt like a failure because I couldn’t figure out this simple act. With my second, I jealously watched other moms who sauntered around the park and potlucks, practically forgetting they had a baby strapped on. With my third, I let myself off the hook and let it be.
My experience speaks to the larger danger of internalizing messages of doom and failure from well-intended parenting theories when we are tired, weepy, and genuinely doing our best as moms to new babies.
There is absolutely not a base of evidence that the specific parenting practices deemed by Dr. Sears as “attachment parenting” does anything to differentiate between other healthy parents not using these practices. As a highly publicized, marketed, and trendy approach to parenting, “attachment” parenting is not only theoretical rather than based in evidence, but can result in more guilt and stress for mothers feeling like they can’t do it “right.”
The postpartum period is full of hormones, sleep deprivation, a loss of your former life and identity, along with a surrender of your mind and body never before experienced and wholly depleting. In fact, a mother with serious depression does pose a risk of attachment problems for her infant, but some of these unrealistic “attachment parenting” expectations may make it more likely a mother becomes depressed, undermining the whole point.
As I grow with my own three children, in times of contented harmony and challenging conflict, there is no question that we are close and connected. All of my children come to me with their fears and disappointments, comforted by silent hugs. I hurt when they hurt and every fiber of me wants to protect them from the pain of life and the world. All this love is as natural and part of me as my muscles and bones, always present and coursing through my blood. Even though I could never wear the baby wrap.
What Our Children Need Most
The Easter Bunny gifted my daughter a mother-daughter journal for back-and-forth journaling when she was 9. The Easter Bunny did not know how it would be received, but it ended up being popular and well-used over time. I will never forget this one fill-in-the-blank sentence: My mom ________________ “really gets me.” This remains the most defining moment yet in my parenting journey, reassuring me, “I’m actually doing well as a Mom.”
Love and Safety
There is no greater gift for our children than the gift of feeling loved and seen as a valuable person on their own. We can know in the depths of our bones how much we love our child, but our child also needs to be confident of it.
I have sat in my therapy office listening to teens in tears, completely convinced they are not important to their very own parents, believing they are not loved. My psychologist self does the therapy thing of working through their emotions, but my Mom self wants to run immediately home to my non-teenager children and make sure they know how much they are loved.
We can flounder around in most aspects of parenting, figuring out sleep, discipline, homework, chores, sibling rivalry, household rules, and so much else through trial and error, like Cinderella trying on all the different slippers before finding the one that fits just right (and then her foot grows again, and we start all over). All that experimenting and making mistakes is really fine in the big picture. What we need to make sure we are actively doing through it all is ensuring our children know without a doubt that they are loved and valued by us, their parents.
One concrete way to do this, especially when they are young but it doesn’t hurt as they get older, is to explicitly differentiate between behavior and person: “I always love you no matter what you do, but I do not like when you yell at me or hit your sister.” After a conflict, it can help as part of the “repair,” to have a conversation about feelings and behaviors, wrapped up in the unshakeable foundation of how much you love each other. I knew I was getting somewhere when my own 4-year-old declared, “I love you even when you yell at me.”
Another step is spending time together – good time, not pandemic quarantine time where there is plenty of it but everyone is driving each other nuts. Time where the focus is being together and having fun (I have found this gets easier as they get older and have fun with more shared interests, not just Paw Patrol).
Family mealtimes have come up again and again in the research on what predicts happier children and families. This is because meals can be a predictable time of togetherness when everyone talks about their day. There may also be bickering, whining about the food, and meltdowns, but not every minute of every meal (most days, hopefully). Even in between the stress points, laughter and connection form the foundational experience of a healthy childhood: the belief that “my family is a safe and secure base no matter what else is going on in my life.”
Being Truly “Seen”
“Being seen” may sound like a cheesy demand of everyone needing to feel “special.” What I mean is much deeper. While we build our relationship with our children, we regard them as a distinct self of value rather than an extension of us or the throw-back approach from our parents’ parents: “children should be seen and not heard.” (That was a different kind of “being seen.”)
I use the phrase to describe noticing our children’s interests and skills and encouraging those even if they don’t align with ours. It includes recognizing how they tick and communicating acceptance of this, flaws and all. This can be most important for a child that you see yourself as different from – maybe in temperament, behavior, socializing, or passions. “Being seen” means treating our child the way all of us want to be treated – as a person with dignity and worth.
Let me be clear: it is superhuman to ensure every interaction with your child communicates dignity and worth. Again, it’s more of the gestalt experience. What is the whole of the relationship you are creating with your child?
What matters is not getting every interaction “perfect,” but allowing ourselves the grace and space to watch, learn, change, and grow with our children.
We all talk about how fast kids change, but we forget we change as their parents too. We can build ourselves up just as want to build them up; in fact, this helps us be better at all of it.
Simply the Best, Or Not
Parenting will never be simple, but what we focus on can be. Even as we struggle with HOW to set limits as an authoritative parent, we keep trying within the context of connecting with our children. Even when we spend a few days away from our baby to stay psychologically afloat, we know our attachment can withstand the break. Even after regrettable interactions where we weren’t our best selves, we give hugs and apologies and know not only how much we love them, but that they still love us. We don’t have to be the best all the time; we can give our best we have in that moment that day, and know we are building the relationship of a lifetime. One warm, firm hug at a time.