Summer of the Attachment Mother

 I took social psychology as an undergraduate and one of my most vivid memories of the course was the day our instructor used a clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to drive home the point about sensationalism and its use to create fear in the public. The segment, called I Know What You Did Last Summer of the Shark, was a parody about the previous year's media focus on a handful of shark attacks. As I've watched the momentum gathered by Time Magazine's May cover and article on attachment parenting, the images of that segment have replayed over and over in my head.

Personally I am not offended by the cover. There is something about its defiance that I find appealing and almost necessary. I am mother, hear me roar!

 (Comic Credit: Heather Cushman-Dowdee)

However, I can't say I am not offended by its intended purpose or the hyperbolic picture it paints of parents who practice attachment parenting. It feels a lot like prostitution to allow someone to "buy" what is and should be a beautiful and natural part of life in an effort to exploit and own it for their own purposes. Yuck. Time, as a magazine, had a purpose in mind: to put something controversial on the cover and by doing so increase readership and media attention. Mission accomplished. Even that doesn't bother me so much though. What bothers me is that people are so willing to buy into what they are fed without so much as questioning it or questioning themselves. I think at best a title like "Are You Mom Enough" is an invitation to evaluate your parenting and perhaps change the things you're unhappy with. At worse it is an invitation to judge others, based solely on the information provided, and to conquer and divide by heightening fear of the unknown or different. I am only one of many people responding to this, and definitely not the most eloquent. But I think my point is sound. Live and let live.

Recommended reading: Mama Solidarity and Are You Mom Enough, The Questions is for what.