API Tells TIME Magazine AP Is Going Mainstream
and We Need Your Help

Support API in this Opportunity to Change Parenting; from Time to CNN

Attachment Parenting made the cover of TIME Magazine.

API celebrates its 18th anniversary this June by continuing to educate, dispel myths, provide parent support, and much more. Reconnect to the vision and message of API in this month's Parent Compass. Please make a donation, help API sustain and increase its efforts, and become a part of this story.

Yes, there is greater awareness of the term "Attachment Parenting." Uninformed articles, opinion pieces, and comments demonstrate, however, there remains a tremendous lack of understanding in a world that so needs Attachment Parenting. Around the clock, API has been working to provide information and education through statements, press releases, interviews, and mobilizing responses to the media. API is also working to support families who will feel the negative impact of unsupportive comments and opinions.

As the next wave of coverage on the media response to TIME is now underway, we want to make sure you have seen API's responses to the TIME article, provided below, as well as have a chance to support this work with a donation or an ongoing pledge today.

Please help sustain API's effort by making a donation today. Not only would we like to continue our ongoing work, we would like to hire more staff and engage more resources to address the tremendous amount of confusion. We anticipate that even after this worldwide discussion on Attachment Parenting quiets, the environment will never be the same.

It's clear it will never be the same from the impact already:

  • API representatives and resources have been the source for hundreds of interviews and articles;
  • API's web server crashed under the tremendous increase in activity the day of the TIME magazine release, forcing a quick move to a more costly server;
  • API's new free membership jumped by more than a thousand members the first days of the release;
  • API appearances on CNN, NPR, BBC, major news networks, and local stations across the United States and internationally (see API Leader Leyani Redditi on CNN, along with other interviews, on API's YouTube channel);
  • Attached at the Heart, the definitive resource on API's eight Principles of Parenting jumped 350% in Amazon rank and sold out at the publisher;
  • API mobilized responses to comments and polls dominated by ill-informed reactions to Attachment Parenting;
  • API's website received millions of page views; its responses retweeted and shared; and
  • Families, and professionals serving families, turning to API for support jumped in numbers.

Of course, it's the cultural shift API works toward that matters:

  • Parents discover their instincts to parent compassionately and value responding sensitively and with consistent and loving care for their children;
  • Mothers not ostracized for breastfeeding their child as long as they mutually desire;
  • Fathers not discounted for their equal commitment to Attachment Parenting;
  • Myths of AP regarding permissiveness, dependence, working outside the home, literal attachment, AP as a checklist, and so on, not dominate and impede parents from reclaiming their instincts;
  • Families find and benefit from healthy, balanced parenting support in their communities and not backlash; and
  • Quality, evidenced-based parenting resources are available for families.

For this to happen, we are faced with, and welcome, more work than ever, engaging discussions and education on all sides. We will continue to release new articles on API's site, API Speaks, and in The Attached Family magazine that will serve as important resources, continue to accredit leaders and add support groups, as well as continue to provide online support.

We thank so many of you who have signed on as AP Advocates and are helping to support API's representation in the media. We hope others will support API by becoming an AP Advocate and making a generous donation.

There are many positives with Attachment Parenting at the forefront of the media, but we also clearly see that in much of the ill-informed and negative media communications, there are families who are feeling additionally pressured, even marginalized or threatened, as they embrace Attachment Parenting. API believes families deserve a receptive environment for compassionate parenting so in our response and press release API helps the public see what TIME Magazine could not help but acknowledge:

Why TIME Magazine Shows Attachment Parenting is Going Mainstream, Not Extreme

When we, Attachment Parenting International, learned that TIME Magazine decided to take on attachment parenting in its May 21, 2012 issue, we had to ask, "TIME, are you news magazine enough?"

Beyond the incendiary attempt to pit mothers against each other asking, "Are you mom enough," and a strategic cover contrived to sell copies, what did TIME actually say about attachment parenting?

In case you don't get very far past the cover, here is what TIME happened to acknowledge to the world about attachment parenting:

  • Dr. William Sears, with Martha Sears, deserve recognition for changing the course of parenting and giving parents The Baby Book 20 years ago.. Dr. Sears is noted by TIME as "The Man Who Remade Motherhood" and author of many parenting books, including The Baby Book: "First published in 1992, The Baby Book is now in print in 18 languages, with more than 1.5 million copies sold."
  • Attachment parenting is changing how we parent: "Chances are also good that, consciously or not, you've practiced some derivative of attachment parenting or been influenced by its message that mothers and babies evolved to be close to each other."

    • "Fans and critics of attachment parenting can agree on two things: there has been a sea change in American childrearing over the past 20 years, and no one has been a more enthusiastic cheerleader for it than Sears."

    "So many of the ideas of attachment parenting are in the culture even if you don't believe in Dr. Sears per se," says Pamela Druckerman , author of Bringing Up Bébé.

    "[Attachment parenting] is a new common sense."
    (TIME, The Man Who Remade Motherhood, Kate Pickert)

  • Nurturing touch fosters security: "...it's hard to argue... Continue reading here to find out what API helps readers see that TIME affirmed about Attachment Parenting, and what was off target.

For many years we have been witnessing a quiet but steady transition of the mainstream culture to attachment parenting--not extremism, as parents experience the benefits of parenting compassionately and become more confident in trusting their instincts.

API is your organization--a grassroots, volunteer organization that needs the support of each one of us, as resources are significantly strained with the sudden increased demand. Please support API with a contribution and help us sustain our voice as we continue to increase understanding, knowledge and support.