AP Our Way: Disabled Parents Making Attachment Parenting Work for Us and Making Peace with When We Can’t
Most books on the style of parenting popularly known as “attachment parenting” or “AP” are from the perspective of and written toward abled parents, with at most a nod toward “learn the difference between the baby blues and PPD with 10 highly patronizing stereotyped questions!” And too often those of us who need professional assistance of one form or another hear nothing but discouragement for our “silly ideas” from the people paid to help us (or our family!), and are often told even parenting “normally” is “too hard” for us or on us and we’d only be “making it worse” for ourselves by implementing tools of attachment.
AP Our Way, a self-published anthology zine, intends to blow raspberries at both camps. Attachment parenting is more than a checklist of choices: it’s about respecting the personhood of children and their inherent need for close relationships with and responsiveness from their family, which can be accomplished whether or not we lactate or babywear or cosleep. Living with disabilities means we know that we can’t care for others if we’re overtaxing ourselves, but that we aren’t incapable or less-than: that in a world not built for us, we have to find our own way — and mostly do, as hard as it sometimes is. AP Our Way will collect and present stories, poetry, graphic art, diatribes and more on how we made the ideals and tools of attachment parenting work for us — and made peace with reality when we didn’t.
AP Our Way explicitly supports the ideas of attachment parenting (see Attachment Parenting International for more), but will include stories of when practices associated with AP did NOT work out, for whatever reason — and advocates letting go of guilt around this, or better yet, never having it in the first place.
Please focus submissions on how your disability(s) affected the choices you made and how you were able to implement your ideals — or how you came to peace compromising on — the following topics:
- sleep
- feeding
- birth
- babywearing
- diapering
- school
- discipline
- siblings
- childcare
- and beyond…
(If sufficient entries are received, the zine might be split into multiple issues by topic.)
Examples: your sleep disorder ruled out bedsharing; you found babywearing easier than pushing a stroller due to your use of mobility devices; breastfeeding was incompatible with your chemotherapy medications; a chronic illness meant you pared down your plans for elimination communication or cloth diapering; your need for health insurance meant you returned to work sooner than you’d like; being on disability leave made homeschooling easier; your latex allergy inspired a homebirth; you learned gentle discipline because your heart doctors warned yelling was dangerous for you; or despite all warnings to the contrary, despite not recognizing yourself in all the mainstream parenting bibles, you were able to parent exactly how you’d set out to. How did you manage, and how did you manage when you didn’t? How has your disability(s) affected your parenting, and vice versa? What is your story?
Who is invited to participate?
- All parents with disabilities from all over the world are welcome to send submissions.
- “Parents” for the purpose of AP Our Way includes parents of all sorts, including (but not limited to) adoptive parents, birth parents, step or blended family parents, queer parents, grandparents, noncustodial parents, single parents, teen parents, parents from poly families, and so on.
- “Disabilities” includes all manner of physical, sensory, mobility, mental, emotional, cognitive, and developmental disabilities, chronic illnesses and conditions that impact your daily life in ways you consider significant.
- We explicitly welcome submissions from parents of color/nonwhite parents; transgender parents; men, women and nonbinary gender parents; and parents for whom English is not the primary language.
- You do not have to identify with the term “attachment parenting” to contribute to AP Our Way, nor agree entirely with all the precepts commonly attributed to an “AP” style of parenting. We only ask that your work reflect respect for the underlying philosophies of attachment parenting and address one or more of the topics listed above from an attachment parenting view.
Please send questions, queries, and submissions of graphic art (reproducible in black and white), poetry, and creative nonfiction (300-2000 words, as well as 100 word drabbles) to apourway at raisingmyboychick dot com. Attachments in RTF preferred; no .docx. Submissions are due no later than June July 1, 2011.
About the editor: Arwyn has written at Raising My Boychick since December 2008 about her experience of attachment-inspired parenting while living with mental illness. Her work has been referenced in newspapers and magazines internationally and has appeared on the group blog Feminists With Disabilities. She edits the Womanist/Feminist Parenting Primer and the anonymous series Naked Pictures of Faceless People, both hosted at her blog.
Proceeds from the sale of the zine will go to support the Independent Publishing Resource Center, a non-profit self-publishing center in Portland Oregon, and other non-profit organizations.
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I haven’t really pondered this! I just sort of struggled through, worried about my kid, got her on her feet (sorta) and keeping my fingers crossed. :D
Let me get a good sleep and I’ll write something up for you.
This is a wonderful idea…as someone who is just now *really* figuring my illness out and what that means to my family I’m not sure what I would say. I based all my decisions on the idea that I would eventually “get well” if I just got more organized, or took more vitamins, or prayed more…bla bla bla. Although I am re-evaluating many of those choices now, as I become more aware of my limitations. It’s actually very freeing, admitting that I am not getting better. I would love to submit something to this project.
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I was pondering on writing a peice about my struggles through a very unexpected emergency c-section and how it really hindered most of my AP parenting styles and made some (such as baby wearing) down right impossible to do. The healing process was long, much more than what they show on TV. It took more than 3 months for me to even feel like myself again and even longer for me to comfortably be able to wear my baby. I am not really sure this qualifies as a disability though and wanted to check with you first before I write it. Please let me know if this would fit into what you are looking for.
Christy — I’m trying to keep the focus on people with pre-existing or longer-term issues, but I’m also allowing people to self-define and self-identify. If you feel represented by the terms disability or chronic illness/injury, you are welcome to submit a piece. And if not, I’d be honored to host a piece as a guest post here on RMB.
How would you feel about a separate section or post on attachment parenting the child with disabilities? I certainly don’t want to take space away from this topic (I’m very interested in reading it!), but I felt a sincere connection to the topic when thinking about my child and how we’ve had to change some of our AP ideals, and I’d be very interested in others’ paths.
scholasticamama — While that’s definitely a topic worthy of discussion, currently the discourse on disability and parenting is dominated by parenting the child with disabilities, and I’m trying to focus here on the parent with disabilities (or chronic illness or injury), because we people with disabilities so rarely get the opportunity to speak for ourselves. But thank you for your interest and support, and I’d be happy to spread the word on any project that addressed that topic.
I figured as much (nice written negative response btw – sounds a lot like my “interesting topic, I’d be happy to read a paper on that sometime” when a student brings up a totally unrelated and generally unwanted topic in class). I will read your zine with interest.
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OHMYGOD THIS IS AMAZING!!!
Since I didn’t FIND this post until after the deadline, I’ll look forward to other people’s contributions. :-) But it’s something that’s always part of my life, and really at the front of my mind lately.
I just typed-and-deleted a 3,000 word rant that really needed to NOT get posted in response to a forum thread elsewhere. It would have been off topic. a tangent on a tangent inspired by a flip comment.
But said rant was on the topic of being disabled and being a parent. And how public accommodation of each condition is still basically pretty appallingly crap. And how public accommodation for the combination of BOTH conditions is basically nonexistent. That may largely be because people seem to not really believe that disabled parents EXIST unless they get it rubbed in their faces. Or it may be subtle disapproval that “someone like me” would choose to parent at all. Or it may be fear when another parent looks at me and imagines how hard their life would be if they were stuck needing wheels to get around. Or.. who knows. But it sucks.
If I EVER see a mobility scooter that allows for also carrying a child in a safety-restraint, I will eat a laptop. Or a disabled stall with a changing table AT WHEELCHAIR HEIGHT. Or… I could go on for days, here.
Thank you for this project :-D
Being under 40 and using a mobility scooter gets me enough looks.
When I’m on my scooter, herding two kids with a third asleep on my lap, it’s like I’m emitting a field that zaps brain cells in onlookers. They don’t even know WHAT KIND of disapproving look to give me!
Interesting. My husband is a legally blind man who consistently parents our almost-two-year-old in a very AP manner. He wears Jack to and from daycare three days a week and is a SAHD the other two days. I’m not sure if I could convince him to write for this publication unless with a specific topic in mind. Are you looking for any themes for an involved dad with a disability?
OH and our local AP group here in Vancouver has a woman come with a toddler boy and she is mobility-challenged and wears him in a sling all the time on her scooter! She uses the tilt function to help get him into position to breastfeed and her assistant also helps. Her husband I believe also has mobility issues (canes). They are lovely AP parents.
I am HANGING out to read this zine. It’s so needed!