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.