Tag Archives: attachment theory

I was in one of those sort of surreal conversations the other day, where someone was telling me that, now that he’s two, the Boychick really should spend some time away from The Man and me, so he can “develop independence”.

I tried to stutter a defense about how he has a lot of independence already, just within the context of our family unit (see? I can’t even articulate the thought well in retrospect), which earned me a patronizing head shake.

But it got me thinking: what IS independence? And why is it seen as so damned important?

Here’s the thing: the Boychick has never been away from The Man or me. One or the other of us has been with him, been the one primarily responsible for overseeing his well-being, at all times. We’ve never had a “date night” where we left him with someone else. We’re not, at this age, absolutely opposed to the idea, but we have no particular desire for it, either. We’ve had lots of dates, and lots of adult conversations, with the Boychick around, and all three of us like it that way just fine. (This is in no way meant to condemn those who do desire — even need — breaks from their children, dates with their partners, or to work in child-free environments part or full time. Although I am overtly and entirely in favor of attachment parenting, I have no desire to police what that looks like in other families, nor even whether they choose it or not.)

In the popular conception, at least in America, this makes the Boychick horribly smothered, denied the opportunity to be “independent”, tied to us (literally, at times) in ways sure to stunt him in the long run.

And yet, no one would ever accuse us of being helicopter parents:

• At the park, I plop myself down on a bench with a book or my schoolwork or my iPhone, and gently encourage the Boychick to run and play — and eventually, when he’s ready to, he does, and wanders far and wide, though usually within my sight.
• At home, he plays on his own while I do my work, and has done since he was a few months old — a few minutes at a time at first, in my lap or on the floor right next to me, now for hours a day (with numerous swings back to show me this or that), and often in other rooms.
• We are entirely in favor of free range parenting, and I, as a former latch-key kid who started biking home by myself at age 8, was recently horrified to discover that Oregon law strongly discourages children under 10 years old being left home alone for even “short” periods of time. (I also discovered I could be prosecuted for leaving my sleeping toddler in the car in our own driveway to run inside, pee, and get the bed ready for transferring him. But noooo, surely society is not at all oppressive of women-who-caretake!)
• We love the book Whistle for Willie, published in 1964, in part because of its portrayal of a perhaps 5-8 year old boy playing on his own in his neighbourhood, even getting sent on an errand to the corner store by himself — of course, he’s not actually alone, because there are several other kids also outside playing (without an adult in sight).

Modern American culture is horrified by almost all these things. We raise the spectre of Stranger Danger, of the Pedophile Lurking in the Bushes, of the omnipresent and omni-oppressive What If? at every turn, restricting and limiting and oppressing — and yes, smothering — our children, even as we push them away.

It seems to me, then, that The Man’s and my sin in the eyes of “mainstream” culture is not failing to foster independence, but our refusal to force detachment — what I sometimes call “pathological independence”. It is our willingness and commitment to provide a safe base from which the Boychick may explore, and to which he always may return, that earns us ire and shaming clucks of the tongue.

Independence, no matter what popular culture says, cannot be created by forcing the chick out of the nest; that is only detachment, which teaches children they cannot trust those around them, and cuts off their rightful sense of interdependence. Real independence, which is entirely capable of coexistence with interdependence and thus dependence as well, is grown in to, at one’s own pace, under one’s own power, and comes from knowing that one is free to roam, free to leap, and yes, free to fall — which children are so much more likely to risk when they know they have a soft space to land.

We spend so much time demanding “independence” in our offspring’s infancy (demanding they sleep alone, forgo our embrace, learn to “self-soothe”), then refusing to let them taste anything approaching real independence (freedom to explore and exist unobserved and unoppressed, along with responsibilities to others who depend on them) when they are at the age they most need it. How much more backwards can we get?

To take this, once again, from the personal to the political: I suggest there is something inherently anti-feminist — misogynist — in this backwards stance.

First, we replace mother’s own (ideal, biological default) milk with man-made artificial infant food; a parent’s arms with artificial rockers, swings, play pens, etc; a parent’s bed and a mother’s breast with barred cribs and artificial white-noise and silicone “nipples”; we tell parents to ignore their instincts, and allow their babies to cry themselves to sleep. Not to put too much biology-is-destiny spin on it, but all of this serves to separate and detach the motherbaby — which biologically ought still be thought of as one unit even after birth, only gradually and mutually separating over time (with “mother” here being substitutable with any number of close allomothers; the point being that infants and to a lesser extent toddlers biologically expect the constant presence of a known, loving, familiar adult or near-adult) — damaging a mother’s belief in her own abilities and conceptualizing her as broken, incomplete, inconsequential.

Then, when both primary caregiver and child ought to be naturally starting to get ready for the child to explore ever further afield, we demand constant vigilance: children must NEVER be left alone or unobserved for even a moment, “because something might happen, dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUN!”; this serves to tie the primary caregiver, usually a woman (either the primary mother or a usually-female allomother in the form of daycare workers, school teachers, playground monitors, etc), to the child, never allowed to pursue her own goals and career, required always to have her attention focused completely and near-exclusively on the child(ren), or risk being cited negligent, labeled a Bad Mother — even risk having her child(ren) taken away by a system that declares alone time under some arbitrary and ridiculously high age actually illegal.

This is classic patriarchy modus operandi: declare women broken, insufficient, lesser-than, dangerous even; then demand our complete sacrifice and subsumation of self under some pretext (which also inevitably serves its end goals), usually exactly counter to the previous demands (thereby, if we are to follow, requiring suspension of rational, logical thought); make it almost impossible to deviate from the demands (lack of allomothers, break up of neighbourhoods, laws and a Big Brother culture quick to dial 911 to enforce the norms); and punish us completely out of proportion to the “offense” if we dare to deviate.

So no, we’re not going to leave the Boychick with a sitter or take him to daycare just so he can taste “independence”; nor will we refrain from leaving him in our yard to play, or home alone when he is ready, just so he can be “safe”: I may not be totally (hah!) independent from the patriarchy, but neither will I bow down and allow it to define “independence” for my child.