Open Letter To Parents Magazine

Meredith Magee Donnelly

Over the course of the 13 months of being a parent I have learned two very important lessons: 1) Parenting is the hardest, scariest job in the world. 2) Excluding the few monster moms flashed across Fox News (if it bleeds, it leads), most parents are doing their best so try not to be such a critic of others‘ parenting styles.

With these lessons in mind I was disheartened by a recent article in Parents magazine, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Baby?, that centered on the theme “Get over it”, in response to mothers hesitant about sleep-training their babies, leaving babies to cry in cribs, or, gasp, exclusively breast feeding. As a pro-attachment parenting mom I can not help but feel that this article was a direct critique of how I choose to raise my child.

Lately many of my conversations with my mom friends have centered on sleep. Yes, it is a precious word in a new mom’s world. Spoken almost in guilty whispers we confide in each other that we still nurse our babies, snuggling them close to our bodies as we rock in our gliders. Some of us use cribs, some of us co-sleep, but all of us know that if spoken too loudly we will be critiqued by a pediatrician, well-meaning mom, or a book.

I am quite sick of speaking in whispers about how I raise my boy. So instead I will scream it via this blog- I ROCK MY BABY! I NURSED HIM TO SLEEP UNTIL HE WAS 12 MONTHS OLD! I HAVE NEVER ALLOWED HIM TO CRY BY HIMSELF!

I am proud of how I raise my son. Despite all of these aspects of parenting that I refused to “get over” he is happy, he is confident, and he is sleeping through the night.

So here is my plea to all moms, doctors and parenting magazine editors, stop critiquing the way I, and so many others, parent. There is no one-size-fits-all parenting model. Let’s stop making parents feel bad about the choices they make and, start focusing on building their confidence so they can continue to be amazing parents, because as I said in the beginning, parenting is the hardest, scariest job in the world. It can also be the most rewarding if we allow it to be.