What’s Your Parenting Style?

While this topic is something I’ve thought often about over the past 10 years or so, deciding to post something about it is due in part to Mocha Dad, who wrote about the subject recently in a post called Parenting By the Book or By Instinct. (It’s a good post…you should hop over and read. I even made the link to the article open a new window.)

I would surmise that the vast majority of us parent by instinct. That being said, books and other information can certainly be great sources of information and advice for those of us who didn’t have good parental examples. For us, well, we knew that the current American standard of child-rearing wasn’t what we wanted (see…apparently you can be conservative and counter-cultural). We made our decision well before our first was born, choosing a path that, to us, was more natural and instinctual…natural childbirth and attachment parenting.

Funny thing about life, though: sometimes things don’t always pan out exactly like we plan. For us, medical complications turned our natural homebirth to a hospital birth with intervention. But we were ok with it, because those things were guideposts, not perfect goals that must be met. Same thing with attachment parenting…there are aspects that we did not and do not follow because of the traits and preferences of the child (one example, our 2nd child didn’t like to be held as much!)

Parenting books can be good resources, just not the end-result…despite any highly misleading titles they may have (read that as things like Ezzo’s Growing Kids God’s Way, which has very little to do with God and is more to do with an egomaniac of a man bent on building cult status). Besides, every once in a while, those supposed “experts” realize how wrong they are. Dr. Benjamin Spock, for example, changed his views after decades of parents following his advice. One great article entitled Dr. Spock Recants His Theory, from the Schenectady Gazette on Feb 12, 1974.

So do read…but also trust your instinct. Books aren’t always right or don’t always fit your child…and society, well, seems to get it wrong more than they get it right.

While this topic is something I’ve thought often about over the past 10 years or so, deciding to post something about it is due in part to Mocha Dad, who wrote about the subject recently in a post called Parenting By the Book or By Instinct. (It’s a good post…you should hop over and read.…