As to whether AP is a fad or not – no, I don’t think I’d use that word, because even in its current incarnation AP practices have been around for longer than I’d associate with the word ‘fad’. But I do think there’s a real sense in which they’re the latest in thing, and I think that that has very little to do with how long people have been practicing these for and a great deal to do with *why* they’re being practiced. No, there’s nothing new about breastfeeding your child into childhood, or carrying a baby everywhere, or taking your baby into your bed. But the reason people have been doing these things for centuries is because that happened to be a) what suited the particular lifestyles that people had at the time and b) what mainstream practice *was* at the time. What’s new, and the ‘in thing’, isn’t the practices themselves, but the way in which they’re hyped as being some sort of superior way of doing things that everyone should be aiming for.

This isn’t an anti-AP polemic – I don’t have anything against AP practices, and I’ve used most of them myself. But I do think that there’s another thing that AP is not. It is not some sort of superior route to attachment and bonding. And that’s the myth I’d most like to see debunked.

I’m proud to lean attachment and I’m happy to have resources like this!