Building attachment with children

It was the Nation’s ‘Global Day of Parents’ on 1 June. Looking back at attitudes to raising children, one thing becomes obvious: we have a rich history of bad parenting advice. 

When Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham and formidable matriarch of Downton Abbey, describes herself as an ‘involved mother’, her nemesis Isobel Crawley seems surprised: ‘I’d imagined [your children] surrounded by nannies and governesses, being starched and ironed to spend an hour with you after tea.’ ‘Yes, but it was an hour every day,’ responds Violet indignantly.

The sturdy wisdom of the time was that too much affection would ‘spoil’ the child. John B. Watson, in his 1928 manual Psychological Care of Infant and Child, advised: ‘Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night.’

Mothers who gave in to their natural instincts to kiss and cuddle their baby were considered feeble-minded by the medical fraternity. As late as 1962, Walter W. Sackett Jnr, in his book Bringing Up Babies,  implied that parents who responded to their baby’s cries were in danger of turning them into communists: ‘If we teach our offspring to expect everything to be provided on demand, we must admit the possibility that we are sowing the seeds of socialism,’ he warned. Sackett also recommended giving babies black coffee from six months old, to get them used to ‘the normal eating habits of the family’!

But by then, Dr Benjamin Spock was making waves with his controversial book, Baby and Child Care, which held to the novel idea that mothers should listen to their instincts. He encouraged parents to pick up and hold their children when they cried. Critics labelled this approach as ‘permissive’. But Dr Spock has arguably become the most influential figure of the century in changing our attitudes toward parenting.

Today, building attachment with children is widely recognised as one of the most important factors in their ability to form positive relationships, as well as succeed in education and the workplace. Attachment is built when parents are responsive to a child’s needs for love, nurture, food, shelter, warmth and the other basics of life. The concept of attachment has given parents back the right to cuddle our child and listen to our natural, loving response to their cries.

Later in his life, Dr Spock ruefully reflected on his influence: ‘Many parents have stopped me on the street or in airports to thank me for helping them to raise fine children … On the other hand I’ve also received letters from conservative mothers saying, in effect, “Thank God I’ve never used your horrible book. That’s why my children take baths, wear clean clothes and get good grades in school.” ’

This perhaps sums up the unique competitiveness of parenting. As humans, we have an amazing capacity to create rules and regulations that make us feel in control, and therefore, better than our neighbour.

There is always someone judging us. But we may not realise that we are judging others, too.

Perhaps the advice that was given 2000 years ago is still the best: ‘In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you,’ said Jesus (Matthew 7:12). Jesus boiled all the rules down to only two importantfactors for human relationships: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like
it: Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22:36-40).

Being a good parent simply means meeting your child’s basic needs and giving them all the love and encouragement they need—just as God does to us. The rest is a playground we all get to play in.

By Ingrid Barratt