Science Vs - Attachment Parenting

Episode Date: July 28, 2016

Judy, a mother of two young kids, practices a demanding style of child-rearing. It’s called attachment parenting, and it says you should keep your baby close at all times, breastfeed on demand, share your bed, and avoid strollers. Like many attachment parents, Judy believes the sacrifices she makes will ensure her kids will become well-adjusted, successful, happy adults. But, what does the science say? To find out, Science Vs speaks to Prof. Alan Sroufe, Prof. Jane Fisher and Reut Avinun. If you liked this episode - our friends at The Longest Shortest Time have just published a story about *eating* placentas.  Credits: This episode has been produced by Wendy Zukerman, Heather Rogers - who interviewed our attachment parent Judy - also Caitlin Kenney and Kaitlyn Sawrey. Edited by Annie Rose Strasser and Alex Blumberg. Production Assistance by Austin Mitchell and Stevie Lane. Sound design and music production by Matthew Boll, music written by Bobby Lord. Sponsors: For 10% off your new Squarespace site, click here and punch in Science Vs at checkout. For 15% off your first purchase at Ministry of Supply, click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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On today's show, science versus attachment parenting. And even if you're not a parent, stick around, because we'll tell you just how much you can blame your parents for screwing you up. One, two, three, four. Are those the three little pigs' houses or is that New York City? New York City. Look how tall those buildings are. Wow. It's taller than the sky.

This is mum Judy playing with her kids, three-year-old Isabel and one-year-old Robert. The cramped one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan where she lives with her kids, three-year-old Isabel and one-year-old Robert. The cramped one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan where she lives with her kids and her husband is packed with toys and children's books. It's unmistakably a kid-centred home and that's exactly the type of parent that Judy is. Kid-centred. She is an attachment parent, which means that she practices a style of parenting that says you should keep your baby close at all times, you should breastfeed your baby, sleep in the same bed as your infant, and no strollers allowed.

I just feel as though a stroller, when they're so small, it doesn't feel right. It just makes me cry to think like they're separated from me and they're all by themselves with blankets as a surrogate. You know, it's not, it just doesn't feel right. In the first few months, it's like the fourth trimester and they should just be part of me. Judy didn't want us to use her last name because she's talking about her kids and she wants to protect their privacy. But she is an attachment parent because she believes that all of the sacrifices she makes to raise her kids this way will make them better adults. I'm a believer.

I'm living the dream. And she didn't get this idea of attachment parenting on her own. There are scores of books and websites devoted to promoting this style of parenting. And the king of it all is William Sears. He popularised the term attachment parenting and according to Sears, attachment parenting leads to a baby who's, quote, more trusting, feels more competent, grows better, feels right, acts right,

is better organised, learns language more easily, establishes healthy independence, learns intimacy, Grows better. Feels right. Acts right. Is better organised. Learns language more easily. Establishes healthy independence. Learns intimacy. And learns to give and receive love. William Sears declined our numerous requests for an interview. But here he is on American talk show, The View. You know, I've been doing this for 40 years.

Yeah. The healthiest babies in the world I have seen. Those who never become school bullies. Those who radiate like a sunflower turning toward a safe. They are the attachment parent of babies. William Sears' seminal book on attachment parenting, The Baby Book, which he co-wrote with his wife Martha, has sold over 1.5 million copies. Even more convincing, though, Angelina Jolie, Kourtney Kardashian and Gisele Bundchen all practised attachment parenting, according to the gossip mags. Perhaps less convincingly, Blossom is a big fan.

Don't know about the future, that's anybody's guess Ain't no good reason for getting all depressed The thing is, though, attachment parenting has been criticised for being absurdly demanding on parents. So is all the work worth it? Can attachment parenting really do what it promises? When it comes to raising your kids, everyone has an opinion. But then, there's science. Okay, so before we take on attachment parenting and all its rules, let's start by explaining where all this stuff came from, because it does have scientific roots.

That is, attachment is a term borrowed from science. And attachment in the scientific community means something in particular. It's something you can test for. Alan Shroff is a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Minnesota, and he has spent his career researching attachment and what makes a child securely attached. He's one of the foremost experts on the topic. Attachment refers to a relationship between an infant and a particular adult. What we mean by secure attachment is that the child is confident about the availability and responsiveness of this particular adult.

So they're secure in that relationship. They feel safe within it. And according to Alan, you can do a test to see whether this attachment exists. The test has a kind of funny name. It's called the Strange Situation Procedure. Alan has done these tests for years, and the sound you're about to hear is from one of his studies. So, in broad strokes, here's how the test works.

A parent and a baby are in a room together. After a few minutes, a stranger enters the room and the parent leaves. Then the stranger leaves and the parent re-enters The researchers watch the reunion of parent and child Focusing on the kid's reaction A child who is happy when the parent returns is considered securely attached A child who continues crying and is upset when the parent returns is considered securely attached. A child who continues crying and is upset when the parent returns or is kind of unresponsive is considered insecurely attached.

There's more to it, but that's the main idea. Now, it's not a perfect test. It's very hard to measure how much confidence a toddler has in her parent. But for those who study attachment, this test is kind of the best they've got. And Alan, he believes in it. The reason it's so good is that it kind of summarises everything that went on. It's like the integrative summary of all the experiences that came the infant's way.

For over three decades, Alan and his team have followed more than 200 people from birth to adulthood, looking for differences in securely attached and insecurely attached kids. He and the team interviewed the kids as they got older. They even set up schools and summer camps to observe the kids interacting with their peers. And Alan says from the early days of the study, he could see the benefits of being a securely attached kid. So, for example, when all the children were three years old, he gave them a little problem-solving task. It was pulling a lever to get a toy.

Now, this is the same kid that you just heard in the strange situation procedure, but now she's three years old. Mercy! Show me how. Those children who had histories of secure attachment were more self-confident, worked harder on the problems, were more persistent, were more agentic,

meaning that they portrayed an inner belief that if they worked hard, they could solve the problem. Alan's study also looked at what happened if kids didn't securely attach, and he found that insecurely attached kids were more likely to have lower self-esteem, harbour feelings of rejection, and have poorer relationships later in life. So the professor tells us that having a securely attached baby is a good thing. But, and this is the question that we'll be investigating, does attachment parenting,

the thing that William Sears popularised, actually lead to what Alan Shroff is testing for? Secure attachment. Do the rules outlined in William Sears' baby book and in hundreds of other articles and websites and books actually ensure secure attachment? We're going to focus on four of these rules, ones that you see again and again and again. Rule number one, breastfeed. A lot. Two. Rule number two, don't let your baby cry, especially at bedtime. Three. Rule number three, share your bed with your baby.

Four. And rule number four, wear your baby. Let's start with rule number one, breastfeed. Attachment parenter, Judy Judy believed in this so much that she went to great lengths to get the job done. I did every possible thing to breastfeed and to make enough milk and to make it seem like I was breastfeeding with a tube on my breast. A tube.

Judy wasn't making enough milk to rely on. She produced some but not enough for the baby to live wasn't making enough milk to rely on. She produced some, but not enough for the baby to live on. And so she needed to use formula. But she didn't want her baby to lose out on the entire breastfeeding experience. So she didn't just use a regular baby bottle. Instead, she attached a tube to the bottle and held it right near her nipple. That way, she figured, the baby would think she was nursing. And you figure out a way to just hold it there with the bottle, with the baby, and I was so determined.

All this determination to give her kids the somewhat authentic experience of breastfeeding, was it worth it? When we consider whether breastfeeding is really better for your kid, there are two parts to this. There's the right boob and the left boob. Joking. Although it's true, right? Anyway, there's the milk and there's the act of breastfeeding. Let's start with the milk. Breast milk is sure good for the baby's health. According to the World Health Organization, breast milk protects against infectious and

chronic diseases. And in the long term, being breastfed has been linked to having lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of obesity. But what about the act of breastfeeding? Is that critical to attachment? Well, a Dutch team followed over 600 mothers and their babies and looked at how breastfeeding affected attachment. In 2012, they published their results, finding that breastfeeding had no impact

on whether the kids were defined as securely attached or not, that is, based on the strange situation procedure. Want more evidence? A 2008 paper, which scrutinised a bunch of studies on this, came to the same conclusion. Quote, Assumptions on a positive role of breastfeeding on the mother-infant relationship are not supported by empirical evidence. End quote.

Conclusion. Breastfeeding is good for a bunch of reasons. Secure attachment isn't one of them. So on to rule number two. Whenever your baby cries, leap into action. Attachment parents can take a zero-tolerance approach to crying. And it's not that babies aren't allowed to cry. It's just that parents should hop to as soon as the tears start, if not before. They give me a little squeak or a little tiny cry. They don't even have to cry.

They just know I'm going to come, and I like that. If I take a shower, I can hear the baby crying from the other room even if the shower's on, even if someone else is out there. If they don't pick them up, I can hear. The baby needs something, and I have to help figure out what it is. And the subject of how much crying is OK often comes up when you're talking about sleep training. So sleep training is teaching a baby to sleep through the night, and a key part of this involves letting your baby cry a bit

without responding too much. The idea is that she'll learn how to put herself back to sleep. But attachment parenting proponents warn that letting babies cry could potentially have severe, long-term detrimental psychological effects. On William Sears' website, he says, quote, Baby loses trust in the signal value of his cry and perhaps baby also loses trust in the responsiveness of his caregivers. Not only does something vital go out of baby,

an important ingredient in the parent-child relationship goes out of parents. Sensitivity. End quote. Sears sums up the whole idea with the line, quote, we train pets, we parent children. End quote.

But according to Jane Fisher, a professor of clinical psychology at Monash University in Melbourne, this is just wrong. I think it's a false assertion to suggest that this is the only way in which sensitive responsive care can be provided. Jane specialises in parenting and early childhood development, and along with conducting peer-reviewed research, she works in a special facility in Australia for parents and babies.

It's called a Residential Early Parenting Service, and it's a place where new parents can go to get counselling and support. We admit nearly 1,000 women a year, and I've been actively involved in clinical work there for 20 years. So I've been involved in the care of 12 to 15,000 mothers and babies. Women arrive at our service usually absolutely exhausted with low mood and high anxiety and very unsettled babies. Often what we learn as we have conversations with them is that any time the baby makes a sound,

they pick the baby up, they hold the baby near them, they take the baby with them wherever they go, day or night. What this leads to is a very unpredictable pattern of care. Jane's an advocate for sleep training and she says the psychological damage the that attachment parents fear isn't real. She points to several studies, including one from this year, which looked at toddlers 12 months after they'd been sleep trained. The study found no differences in emotional or behavioural wellbeing

and no differences in secure attachment between the babies who'd been sleep trained and those who hadn't. And Jane Fisher says that the benefits of sleep training go beyond the kids. Sleep training is good for mums and dads too. So after a couple of days of care like this, the amount of crying and fussing diminishes dramatically, feeding improves, overall amount of sleep increases.

And we can see that as that happens, a mother's confidence grows, her anxiety diminishes, and her spirits lift. And I've seen this now more than 10,000 times, and it is a very powerful thing to observe. Jane says that even though she knows the research about sleep training and she knows that it isn't bad for babies. She gets why it's really hard for mums like Judy to sleep train, to let their babies cry a bit in service of them sleeping through the night. Jane's a mum too. Now you've got four kids. Do you remember trying to put your first one to sleep or your second? Yeah, and I was extremely dumb. So with my first baby, I continued to suckle her overnight for far too long. And finally, when she was about 18 months old, a book came out called Toddler Taming. And we read the book and I thought, I can't possibly do this. But my husband was more

robust and he said, we're going to do it. So for two nights, I didn't get up. He soothed and settled her in bed and it stopped. The overnight waking stopped. And why did you, when you read the book, why did you think there's no way I can do this? Oh, I think because it was so difficult to feel that I was withholding care she needed. But in fact, what I now realise is it wasn't withholding care. She had lots of

loving care. It was trying to actually help her into a developmentally appropriate state where she could sleep in her own bed all night. Conclusion. According to the best science available, sleep training or letting your baby cry a bit will not damage them or your relationship with them. But it does mean, parents, you might just get some sleep. Coming up after the break, should parents sleep in the same bed as their baby? Plus, the man who sold 1.5 million books on attachment parenting sends us his evidence.

Welcome back to Science vs Attachment Parenting. So, time for attachment parenting rule number three. Sleep with your baby. Judy's daughter, Isabel, slept with her parents until she was around 15 months old. Judy wanted her son, Robert, to sleep in the bed with her and her husband as well, but Robert was too restless, so she keeps him as close as possible. But it kind of doesn't matter. We're kind of swirling around all night. Like, everybody's facing different directions. I love you forever.

Science Versus producer Heather Rogers talked with Judy and her family at their home in Manhattan. When you sleep, Isabel, where do you sleep? Um, in my bed. So when... And he sleeps inside too. So when... Daddy sleeps inside too. So when everyone's asleep, everyone's asleep in the same room? Yes.

Is it nice to wake up and your parents are there? Mommy! That's a no comment because she's only known that her whole life, so she doesn't know any other way. It's a sweet scene, and according to William Sears, it's more known that her whole life, so she doesn't know any other way. It's a sweet scene, and according to William Sears, it's more than that. In the baby book, he says that if you don't sleep with your baby, you risk breaking, quote, fragile connections with your baby, end quote.

We asked William Sears for the research that supports that claim and others that he and his wife make about attachment parenting. We heard back from his communications officer, his son, Matt Sears. He sent us an email that read, quote, a lot of Dr. Bill's writings are based primarily on his own experience raising eight children and 40 plus years as a paediatrician, end quote. Matt did include links for two academic papers on sleeping in the same bed as babies, but neither paper, one from 2010 and the other from 2012, endorsed this practice. And neither paper said anything at all about attachment. And I guess that makes sense since their author is an anthropologist and not a medical scientist or a developmental psychologist. But Professor Jane Fisher is a psychologist

and she gets frustrated by people making grand claims about the supposed benefits of sleeping in the same bed as your baby. Well, as frustrated as an Australian version of Mrs Potts can sound. Into the cupboard with you all! I don't think it's accurate to say that if a mother and her baby are not sharing a sleep space, that this responsive care in which a baby's needs are responded to, I don't think that sharing a space is essential for that.

But for Jane Fisher, it actually goes beyond frustration and into professional duty. She says that when it comes to sleeping in the same bed as your baby... It's been shown quite clearly that constitutes a risk to that child's survival. So it is no longer permissible in Australia for us to encourage, permit, condone, give any professional endorsement to a baby sharing a bed space with an adult.

The risk that she's talking about is babies dying from sudden unexpected infant deaths. And in the US, 3,500 babies died this way in 2014. Now, we don't know why these babies die, but we do know that the risk of sudden infant death jumps when babies share a bed with their parents. Attachment parenting websites and books often downplay this danger. They argue that infants are only at risk when mothers smoke, drink or take up drugs.

Now, while these factors actually can increase the risk of death, a 2012 paper found a baby is still at risk even if these things aren't happening. It found that for babies under three months there is a five-fold increase in the risk of these kinds of deaths when infants share a bed with quote non-smoking parents and the mother who has not taken alcohol or drugs, end quote. Conclusion, there is no evidence that sleeping in the same bed as your baby will help that baby attach, and there is a small but very real risk of sudden unexpected infant death. Okay, so far, the data to back up these rules of attachment parenting

are looking pretty thin. So what about rule number four? Carry your baby on your body. In the baby book, Sears writes, quote, Good things happen to carried babies and their parents. Most noticeably, carried babies cry less, as if they forget to fuss. Besides being happier, carried babies develop less, as if they forget to fuss. Besides being happier, carried babies develop better, possibly because the energy they would have wasted on crying is diverted into growth.

End quote. Also in the baby book, Sears referred to research they conducted on baby wearing. They write that while attending an international parenting conference, they noticed mothers from other cultures holding their babies in sling-like carriers. They were particularly struck by two such women from Zambia. Quote, Women in their culture don't have the benefits of books and studies about mothering hormones, what they have is centuries of tradition that have simply taught them that something good happens to women and their babies when babies are born, end quote. But according to the experts we did talk to, there is no evidence that carrying a baby

will help your kid to securely attach. The only research that we could find on this topic were three studies that considered the link between parents holding infants in a sling for at least three hours a day to reduce their baby's extended bouts of crying, nothing on attachment specifically. And if you're curious, though, one of the studies found that baby wearing reduced the duration,

although not frequency, of the crying, but the other two studies showed no impact. Conclusion. You can wear your baby in a sling, but it won't mean your baby attaches. OK, so that's four rules of attachment parenting and no good academic research to back them up. And then there's this. Remember Alan Shroff and the strange situation procedure? Mercy. Mercy. So Alan has spent decades testing the effects of secure attachment.

You can think of Alan as the prophet of attachment and William Sears, with his 1.5 million books sold, as the televangelist. So what does Professor Alan Shroff think of the rules of attachment parenting? Those prescriptions are not based in any solid research findings. It oversimplifies what's involved, and it makes it sound like it is simply a list of things, and if you check those off, then you don't have to worry about anything else. Shroff says attachment parenting's guidelines can make perfectly good parents feel guilty and inadequate. And he says the answer to the question, how do I get my child to securely attach, is a lot less prescriptive. It doesn't have to be anything

like perfect. When we looked at the parenting, we did a lot of home observation and we were amazed at how robust infants were, how broad the boundaries are of what adequate care is. In fact, according to Alan, the majority of kids, 70 to 80%, will securely attach. No sling-wearing required. Conclusion. There's no good scientific evidence that attachment parenting leads to kids who are attached. Now that's settled, it's time to ask, how much does secure attachment actually determine a kid's future success?

Well, Alan's decades-long study found that whether a kid is securely attached predicted how well they did at school, how good they were at making friends and having romantic relationships, and even their personal sense of responsibility. But how well it predicted this might surprise you. It turns out that by age 19, secure attachment accounts for 5% of the difference between the children with those good qualities and those without. We asked Alan about this and he acknowledged that securely attaching as a baby was a weak predictor for life success. He said that all kinds of other influences in later childhood and early adulthood also have power in shaping who we become.

Things like our relationships with our siblings, the quality of the schools we go to, if we have bad experiences in life that have nothing to do with our parents. But Alan, as well as other scientists that we talked to for this episode, said the fact that secure attachment as a baby continues to positively influence you at all into your adulthood is still significant. So while 5% might not sound like a lot, it's still something. But you know what counts for more than 5% of our personality when we're all grown up? Our genetics. So parenting within the normal range when it's not neglectful and it's not abusive usually only has limited our genetics. So parenting within the normal range, when it's not neglectful and it's not abusive, usually only has limited influence.

There is still some influence of the parents, but, I mean, we only talk about small change in the child's behaviour. Reot Avinun from Hebrew University of Jerusalem researches how genes affect the relationship between children and their parents. She told us that her work and the work of many others shows how important genetics are. So, for example, a US research team analysed dozens of studies

looking at the association between parenting and chronic childhood anxiety, and they found that parenting accounted for only 4% of the difference between chronically anxious and non-anxious children. But other studies using identical twins found that genetics explains between 30% to 80% of the difference. Similar results have been found with depression. So, while creating secure attachment is important,

genetics matters too. And as Reut and I were talking, I was reminded of a poem, as I often am. It's called This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin, and it starts with, They f*** you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and some extra just for you.

Why do you think we... What do you think? Yeah, I actually do know this one. I actually think that this is exactly why it's important to show how limited parental influence is because I think that children blame their parents a lot and they think that if they're unsuccessful, that if they're anxious or whatever, then they always blame the parents.

I mean, it's nice to blame our parents, but it's not really based on research. Conclusion. Genetics matter. It plays an important role in our personality, our intelligence and our mental health. But it's really hard to build a movement and sell books with the message, sorry, your kid's just born that way. So, does attachment parenting stack up? Science says...

..no. What we've learnt is that we can push our kids around in strollers, we can bottle feed them, we can let them sleep in their cribs, we can let them cry a little and still be good parents. On the other hand, you can breastfeed your kids until kingdom come, you cannot sleep train them and they'll still be fine. We cannot be clearer. There is no good scientific evidence

that by following the rules of attachment parenting, you'll end up with better kids. So why is it such a popular idea? Well, being a parent is scary. The mums and dads that I've talked to while working on this story, including our own Heather Rogers, all say that having so much control over this little human being, all the choices that that entails can feel overwhelming

and the stakes can feel so high. But if you sacrifice all of your time, all of your energy, just like some of these websites and books tell you to, then maybe you can say, I've done everything I could. I've left no stone unturned. Heather put our scientific findings to Judy. She told her that the academic in attachment research, Alan Shroff, doesn't agree with the primary tenets of attachment parenting.

He's saying that every parent who's attentive and is a good parent, but that kind of, that gives people so many options that they don't really know what to do. I mean, that means everything's okay. So then how do you decide what to do? I know like when I had, when I had my son, I mean, ever since then, I just am kind of floored by how many decisions I have to make and how big they feel. I just, like, I'm plagued by doubt. I'm doubting that I should have done it. I mean, in some ways when it's really hard or I'm always thinking, like,

yeah, sometimes it would be good to just say goodnight and leave them in the room because that's easier for me. But so why do, why make all the sacrifices? Because I can't stand the crying and I think that it's, um, with besides the cry. So it's for you? It's for me. If I didn't answer their cry, I couldn't manage. So I'd be too anxious. Yes, having a baby is scary, but that's no reason to follow bad advice. That's science versus attachment parenting. This episode has been produced by Heather Rogers,

who interviewed our attachment parent, Judy, and also Caitlin Kenney and Caitlin Sori, Judy, and also Caitlin Kenny and Caitlin Sorey. Edited by Annie Rose Strasser and Alex Bloomberg. Production assistance by Austin Mitchell and Stevie Lane. Thanks to everyone at Gimlet who told us about their children. Even more thanks to everyone at Gimlet who didn't tell us about their children. Sound design and music production by Matthew Boll. Music was written by Bobby Lord.

Science Versus is a production of Gimlet Media. Next on Science Versus, gun control. Just a quick note, if you enjoyed our show, you should also check out The Longest Shortest Time. They do a lot of great narrative and storytelling pieces Just a quick note, if you enjoyed our show, you should also check out The Longest Shortest Time. They do a lot of great narrative and storytelling pieces about bringing up kids. But this week, they're doing something a bit different and exploring the science of eating placentas.

And in the story, they put a childless man to the ultimate test. First, I had a couple of questions for him. So what do you know about placentas? I know nothing. I know, I know, I would say the amount I know about placentas is that they are vaguely, like, like, I would use the word vague, vague. I know that, like, like a placenta is also called an afterbirth. Is that right? Is that a thing? Is that right? But they do come after birth, I think.

They come out and they're a thing. In my mind, when I picture a placenta, and I don't know if this is right. You know when Spider-Man like shoots his web? Like the end part of that? But I don't know if that's at all what it, that's literally, I've just told you everything I know about placentas. So are you inclined to believe that like eating your own placenta

could help your mental health? I have no idea what you just said or why someone would do that. That's not a thing in my knowledge of human experience. That's Hilary Frank, the host of The Longest Shortest Time. And in the story, they're going to explore whether eating your placenta after giving birth can help with postpartum depression. That's The Longest Shortest Time, and you can find them everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Next time, science versus guns. Do more guns mean less crime? Didn't you think that everybody in there would look like Duck Dynasty characters? I did. This is absolutely true. 50 years of the media perpetuating us as fat white guys with summer teeth, some over here, some over here, with a beard and suspenders and a baseball cap on and my Bible in my left hand and clinging to my gun in my right hand.

Am I right? I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.