In my last blog, I wrote about Jean Liedloff’s book The Continuum Concept. Liedloff spent two years in the South American jungle with indigenous tribes, and she wrote an account of their family life. Many of her principles are also those of attachment parenting.
In the book, Liedloff says that the tribal people she lived with went about their business with their babies in arms or on their backs. Babies were integrated into the social life of the tribe.
Few people in my city seem to have such a tribe. I’m lucky enough to have both sets of grandparents nearby. I’ve also worked on building a community of people around our family, both online and in real life. And you know what? It wasn’t hard. The hard part is reaching out to people at the beginning and getting a pattern of connections rather than a pattern of isolation. This pattern of connection – saying hi to your neighbor, going to the park with a friend – is so incredibly helpful to a new mother.
In some ways, we are a very child-centered society. We have books, movies, and toys geared specifically to infants. We can enroll our babies in classes.
Yes, my daughter had books and toys as an infant. However, I also saw the value in creating a community and being social with people of many ages. We went out a lot. We socialized with many, many different people. I am not a social butterfly, so this was hard.
We also did a lot of work around the house and the garden. Now, it took some time before my daughter was able to nurse in the sling and I was fully recovered from birth. However, a couple of months on, I was able to wash dishes, cook meals, do laundry, and go for hikes with my daughter in the front carrier. It was wonderful – she got the closeness she craved (and believe me, she craved it!) and I got things done around the house and introduced my daughter to the world inside and outside our home.
Since that time, we’ve remained engaged with our community. We not only connect with friends, we also go to community events and meetings together. My daughter has been an honorary board member of a local gardening association since she was 6 months old. She’s also attended meetings of a nonprofit I’m involved in since she was born. Sometimes we go to swimming lessons, sometimes (rarely!) we clean the house, sometimes we go for a walk, sometimes we attend a meeting. It’s all family stuff, the makings of a life.
I don’t think of this activity as self-centered. As a family, we do dishes, we get involved in our community, we have fun. I prefer to think of our lifestyle as family-centered, not child-centered or self-centered.
What do you do to build community and engage in it with your children?