Tandemové kojení jako specifický prostředek kontaktního rodičovství – zkušenosti matek

The phenomenon of tandem nursing has not been much captured by psychological research. Tandem nursing is practiced by some mothers who follow the trend of attachment parenting. In tandem nursing, the mother breastfeeds both the younger and the older child at the same time. In-depth interviews were conducted with four women who claimed to practice attachment parenting and breastfed their toddler child together with their older sibling at preschool age. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyze the data, and four main themes were identified: 1) Efforts to maintain breastfeeding at all costs – from the decline of breastfeeding in pregnancy to the sharp increase after childbirth to the ideal of self-reinstatement; 2) Mother in the middle – „I feel like I'm still…always in the middle…physically and mentally…between the children“; 3) Tandem nursing as a safeguard for the older child in the new family structure and the mother's efforts to support sibling relationships; 4) Support and criticism of tandem nursing leading to reinforcement of beliefs.

What Is Natural Is Best: A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s Engagement in Attachment Parenting

Attachment Parenting is a form of “intensive parenting” and involves a set of caretaking practices that are perceived by proponents of Attachment Parenting to nurture a strong maternal–child bond. Based on semi-structured interviews with 15 women who self-identified as Attachment Parents and observations of La Leche League meetings, this study investigates the ways in which parenting behaviors are understood and rationalized in relation to the philosophies of Attachment Parenting and the wider parenting culture. Study findings illustrate how the women in this study account for their parenting practices through both an appropriation and rejection of Attachment Parenting expertise and engagement in a discursive appeal to “what is natural is best.” Given a wider sociocultural environment characterized by multiple forms of expertise and risk, the ways in which Attachment Parenting serves as an interpretive frame and moral road map for the women in this study are discussed.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the attachment parenting (AP) phenomenon from the perspectives of black mothers. It reviews insights that the narratives of black mothers offer about the contemporary and particular experience of motherhood. It also analyzes AP journeys from the extreme practice of privileged white hippies to an increasingly accepted and influential dogma in the policies of the state and medical professionals. The chapter talks about the disruption of dominant construction of good mothering as the province of only white, middle-class women through the engagements of black mothers. It documents the diverse ways black women use AP to assert themselves as good mothers.

Reclaiming AP

This chapter highlights the terms ‘welfare queen’, ‘baby mother’, and ‘angry black woman’ as representations of black womanhood that dominate popular culture and frame public policy making. It mentions Patricia Hill Collins, who describes the terms as stereotypical representations of black womanhood that play a central role in the ideological justification of the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. It also explains how the terms perpetuate black women's inferiority and pathology that are specifically linked to black women's failures as mothers. The chapter concentrates on the diverse experiences of several black mothers that provide a small glimpse into the complex ways that they went about developing a good view of motherhood that is inspired by attachment parenting (AP). It analyzes the black women's dislike of the label of AP, which reflected their belief that this style of childrearing was more natural and familial.