In Praise of Attachment Fathers
There's a saying that when a baby is born, a mother is born. In truth, when a woman is pregnant with her first child, her body nurtures not only her growing baby, but her growing spirit as a mother. Because the survival of a baby depends on its mother's good care during pregnancy and its good care after birth, a woman is biologically driven to bond with her baby, the act that makes her a mother in spirit as well as in name.
A man, on the other hand, is not biologically driven to bond with his baby. This fact, says family therapist and father, Michael Gurian, in The Wonder of Girls, "provides the base, in nature, for both the difficulties and the high achievements of being a father." He must put forth conscious effort to bond with his baby. For this effort, he is to be praised.
An attachment father not only trusts the instincts and supports the choices of his child's mother, he is intimately involved with the care and nurturing of their child from the very beginning. He uses tools, such as supporting his partner in breastfeeding, wearing his baby in a sling, sharing sleep with his baby, and responding sensitively to his baby's cries, that help him and his child get connected. This "attachment parenting" approach, advocated by the parenting team, Dr. William and Martha Sears, "is what most parents would do anyway if they had the confidence and support they needed to follow their own intuitions."
Getting connected is an attachment parent's ultimate goal. "Use these attachment tools as a starting point," say the Sears in The Attachment Parenting Book, "for working out your personal parenting style--one that fits the individual needs of your child and your family."
My husband began bonding with our daughter while I was pregnant. He spoke to her through my belly, and read her a bedtime story each night. He monitored my diet, attended prenatal checkups and childbirth classes with me, and read books on fathering. Early during my pregnancy, he envisioned our child as a toddler, an age at which he could play with her and teach her. As her birth neared, his focus shifted from bicycles and science toys to rattles and tiny shoes. He became more in tune to the reality that we were expecting an infant--he got to know her better.
My sister became pregnant two months after I did. "He's already got our son's bicycle picked out," she told me of her boyfriend. I knew he was on the right track.
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