15/05/2026
Attachment parenting was never meant to exist inside a detached society. Can we just acknowledge this?
We are trying to practice biologically normal infant care in a culture that has become increasingly disconnected from caregiving, community, interdependence, and even from our own bodies.
Babies still arrive expecting closeness.
They still want to be held day and night.
They still wake frequently.
They still regulate through touch, movement, breastfeeding, proximity, and co-regulation.
Human infants have not changed.
But society has.
We now live in a world that expects mothers to mother as though they don’t have needs. To respond to babies while also remaining productive, independent, emotionally regulated, professionally available, physically attractive, and chronically overstimulated. All within a detached society that will offer her no real support.
And then mothers wonder why they’re drowning.
Not because attachment parenting is wrong.
But because attachment parenting was never supposed to happen in isolation.
For most of human history, attachment-based care existed inside of attachment-based communities.
There were aunties holding babies.
Grandmothers cooking meals.
Older children entertaining toddlers.
Neighbors stopping by.
Women resting together.
Multiple nervous systems sharing the load of raising humanity.
A mother breastfeeding a baby all night was not also expected to wake up alone and carry the entire weight of domestic labor, emotional labor, financial pressure, and modern life without pause.
Responsive parenting only works sustainably when someone is also responding to the mother.
That’s the missing piece.
So if you feel exhausted by the constant touch…
If you feel emotionally frayed despite deeply loving your baby…
If you sometimes wonder why something that feels so instinctive can also feel so impossibly heavy…
It’s because humans were never designed to parent this way alone.
Your baby is not too dependent.
You are not too sensitive.
You are trying to stay deeply connected in a society that rewards disconnection.
And that is hard work.
✏️Julie Matheney, LA Lactation. I see you.
