Then and Now: Parenting Philosophies Over 20 Years

by John Michaelson/TNS

AUSTIN – While the times have changed tremendously for families in Texas and across the country over the past two decades, most of the main philosophies of parenting really have not. So says Janet Jendron, board president of Attachment Parenting International, a group celebrating its 20th anniversary. She says today’s parents have to deal with children growing up with new technology, social media and the like, but…

“What’s changed is not the basic parenting. Attachment parenting is natural parenting,” says Jendron. “It’s what people have the instincts to do, and that’s what’s kept the human race going all these years. It’s being close, feeding on demand and all of that.”

Attachment Parenting International was founded in 1994, with a goal of promoting practices that create strong and healthy emotional bonds between parents and children. October is Attachment Parenting Month.

In the past 20 years, there’s been a great deal of research into parenting, on everything from the benefits of breastfeeding to the use of corporal punishment, which Jendron notes has garnered much recent attention with the happenings in the National Football League.

“It’s most interesting that that’s coming out now on such a big scale, because Attachment Parenting all along said, ‘These decisions you make in a family make a difference in society, in violence in society,’” Jendron says. “And the way a child is parented is the way he’s going to instinctively, or she, raise his or her own children.”

Another growing challenge in raising children, says Jendron, is how parents are becoming overwhelmed with opinions and products.

“Parents now have in front of their eyes, Facebook, on TV, it’s all of these things that they think they need to have to raise a child. And really, actually, very few of those things are absolutely necessary,” she says. “There’s a lot of stress on new parents to have the right product, do the right thing.”