The reading I have done about traditional societies has the mother, along with a close knit group of other family members/neighbour women, caring for the baby for about the first two years. During that time, the child is not pushed to be independent, but is expected to be an extension of the mother and be at the breast, on the back, sleeping next to the mother. Yes, those are things that I call “tools” of attachment parenting. Not rules. I believe it is easier to foster an attachment when using those tools, but not impossible to do so if you don’t. A mother, in a traditional society, can go about her day while staying physically close to her baby if she wears her baby. Whereas a western modern mother who pushes her baby around in a stroller or places that baby in a swing at home, may need to more proactively take time out of her busy day to ensure to create that connection.

In traditional societies, at around the 2 year mark, the care of the child is often transferred from the mother to the village. In fact, some of the things I have been reading in that regard were what prompted me to write this post. Mothers do not have to do everything on their own from birth to age 18 (or beyond). They can create a circle of trust, a village, and find a way to transfer elements of their child’s care, both physical and emotional, to that village. In traditional societies, that is often older children. However, I don’t think that a lot of our Western institutions are what one would constitute a village. A structured school setting with 20 or more 5 year olds in a kindergarten classroom or a day care setting where the early childhood educators are so busy wiping bums, feeding, dressing to go outside, cleaning up and putting to sleep the X number of children in their care, are not exactly “village” type environments. Some are perhaps, but most are not.

In any case, the point of this post was not to glorify traditional child rearing or to criticize non-AP practices. The point was to send mothers the message that they don’t need to do everything on their own, but they may need to work at creating a village if they don’t want to be alone.

If you’re not referring to Annie or this post, I have to wonder what place your comments have here and exactly what your motivation for posting them is. I could also say that “some people” do all kinds of things but I don’t know what this has to do with this post which is about (correct me if I’m wrong) how we often parent alone and that we could all do well with some help from our “village” in whatever form that may be.

I think that when comments get off topic like this, the conversation tends to get aggressive or confrontational and it really becomes about something that it wasn’t about it the first place. In my mind this does more to create an “us-versus-them” mentality than anything else.