Parenting attachment

Mother's Day was last weekend, and so my love and I had our 23rd iteration of the usual dialogue.  Typically this exchange takes place either a day or two before or on the "holiday" proper.

Him, sheepishly, making cute face: "Is this one of those holidays where I'm supposed to do something for you?"  

Me, happily, no rancor: "Nope.  Last I checked, I'm not your mother."  

I'm pretty sure this is not the normal expectation, so I can't blame him for checking.  Plus, things change: maybe there will come a year (unlikely) where I'll suddenly be disappointed that he hasn't somehow celebrated the kick-ass mother that I am and always have been.

But it's really true: I expect nothing from him on this day because he is not my offspring.

And, when it comes to my offspring, I don't particularly expect anything either, only because I am always aware and grateful of how good The Kid is and there has never been a moment in which I didn't know and fully feel loved, appreciated and celebrated by him.  

This Mother's Day he surprised me so much by appearing at our house in the morning with an enormous bouquet.  We sat, drank a cup of coffee, shot the shit before he had to leave for work.  Such a sweet treat.

But all time with The Kid is a sweet treat, at least for me.

It's pretty much always been that way.  Always.  He never had terrible teenage drama.  I can't remember any stage in which I felt like he hated me or thought I was totally lame.  Sure, we've argued and disagreed and yelled at each other and probably told each other to Fuck Off more than once in the time we've known each other, but really my experience of motherhood has been one long treat for over 24 years now. 

So it surprised me how irritated I was when I started hearing about attachment parenting on the radio last week, following the publication of a Time magazine dedicated to the subject, featuring on the cover a photo of a woman nursing a toddler, himself standing a chair, and the words, "Are you Mom enough?" I hadn't even seen the magazine, but the women talking on NPR made me furious.  I'm sure there are plenty of topics I could be interviewed about on the radio that would make listeners fume about what a self-indulgent, self-absorbed, self-righteous yuppie I am.  Which is why so far, I've turned down all radio interview requests, ha ha ha.

My irritation surprised me because all of the stuff that so-called attachment parenting is about -- the breastfeeding, the carrying, the bonding, the co-sleep -- I did all that shit.  OK, I didn't nurse The Kid until he was old enough to request the tit by name, but yep, I did all that shit because that's what came naturally to me, "naturally" as the result of my own upbringing and (I like to think) common sense. I read as many baby books as I could find in the late 80s, but most of them were utter crap.  Everybody was all crazy about Penelope Leach in those days.  I threw that book out, that's what total crap I thought she was talking about mothering a boy-child.  I just did what worked for me and for The Kid.  It was simple.  After all, don't all other creatures figure this out without books, websites, magazines and branded tote-bags?

Probably I was just annoyed by the name -- it is all kinds of fucked-up to call some group of choices "attachment parenting," since by implication, if you're not making the same choices, then you're choosing not to be attached to your child. Lame.  And though I agree with so many of its tenets, still I think it's sad that some people need a book or a movement to tell them what seems totally obvious.  It's sad that some people need to belong to something in order to feel OK about what they choose to do.  They won't bring the baby into the bed unless they read about it in a book or can belong to a Mommy Group that promotes it.  Whatever.  

The kicker for me was a woman on the radio, still nursing her 2 1/2 year old child, who basically said that she was doing it less for her child than for herself.  She enjoyed it and didn't want to do stop.  So I have to ask the question:

Who are you parenting with your attachment parenting, your kid or your own self?  

Parenting should be about the kid, dummy, not about you.  Nursing should be about the health of the child, dummy, not about how skinny you can get and how fast, not about some competition to see Who Is the Mommyest of Them All, not about your need to be needed, your need to be the goddess, the source of all being, in some other little dependent person's life.  Do it because it makes sense for your kid, but not because you have nothing else to do with your life, no other purpose to fulfill than feeding your child, constructing your whole life around the daily needs and minutiae of your child's life. It came off less as attachment parenting than parenting attachment.  Sad.

The thing about motherhood, for me anyway, is that it's just one aspect of who I am -- it's not the sum-total of my purpose on this earth.  I have, I think we all have, more important work to do here, bigger contributions to make, than purely delivering on our biologic promise, our evolutionary drive to pass on our genes and then consciously and deliberately raise good people.  Enough with the Mommy Cult, pretty please.  Put your tit away and get on with life, will you?  Give up your parenting attachment and do something already.  

Next year, I will welcome iteration #24 of the Mother's Day dialogue.  I look forward to it, to clarifying once again that Mother is not my identity, but just one aspect of self at which I shine because I know, without a magazine or a website, that being a full-on happy, self-realized person makes you good at everything, especially being a mom.