Detachment parenting

My mother let us ride without seat belts. I let my daughter play with sharp tools. I am such a mess as a mother.

By Susan Straight

Mar 13, 2001 | I spent all weekend slinking around my house, telling myself, "You're a horrible mother." If I'd had a whip, I would have flagellated myself, but all I had was the vacuum hose hitting me in the thighs. I muttered, "You're irresponsible. Selfish. She could have lost a finger!"

Very dramatic.

I knew the pick hammer was a bad idea when my neighbor handed it to my daughter. But I was detached. I thought, "Cool. They'll stay busy excavating that huge dried-mud pile and I'll clean the kitchen."

Detachment parenting is not good, I know now. I admit right here that I only learned what attachment parenting was last year, by reading about it in magazines. Bonding with your baby, the family bed, carrying your infant and toddler at all times, like in a Snugli. Cool.

But see, I'm 11 years into this already. I've been messing up for more than a decade. First off, I work. I have been working since I was 14. And the choice remains clear today, in my house: Mom works 25 hours a week, we eat three meals a day plus mucho snacks.

I bonded big time with my first daughter, Gaila. At 3 months, she stayed with my mother-in-law, who cuddled her and sang without cease, while I rushed back from work twice a day to breast-feed. When Gaila was 2, though, I had to leave her with my husband's godmother, who'd provided home day care for 30 years.

I will never forget the sight of Gaila splayed on the yard's chain-link fence, clinging like a kitten on a screen, screaming so loud the neighbors and relatives would grin and say, "There goes Gaila the Waila. Her mama must be off to work."

We didn't live in an attachment kind of place. I didn't even know what a Snugli was. But I carried Gaila all the time when she was an infant -- too much, according to my roughneck friends and relatives, who said, "Put that baby down. She's spoiled."

I didn't listen. I liked the way Gaila's fingers felt clutching my collar or hair into a tangle of security.

We didn't have a changing table, and our floors were hard wood except in her bedroom, so I changed her on the floor and then lay around with her while she crawled on me.

One day the second toe on her right foot swelled and turned purple, and I rushed to the pediatrician. It was my fault -- one of my long blond hairs had wrapped around her toe, nearly cutting off the circulation. The doctor had to wedge tiny scissors in and cut the hair. Gaila's toe bled a little, and I felt a sharp pain ricochet between my hipbones, like a shadowy contraction. My fault, I kept thinking, for days. All my fault. How could I have been so careless? I am such a mess as a mother.

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