Article provided by New Native.

MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY FEEL THAT MY BABY’S GOING TO BE TOO DEPENDENT BECAUSE SHE’S BEING WORN IN A SLING A LOT.

What you’re talking about is the old fear-of-spoiling question. As little as ten years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that if you frequently held a baby, responded sensitively to her cries, nursed her on cue instead of on schedule, and were attentive to her needs, she’d grow up to be dependent, manipulative, and spoiled. You’ll be happy to know that both science and experience proved these ideas to be wrong. At one meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics I attended, the main topic of concern was: What builds a brighter, more independent baby? The consensus among psychologists and pediatricians who reviewed the medical literature: caregivers’ responsiveness to the cues of babies. Children, like food, spoil when left alone.
The most notable research conducted on this topic was carried out by two doctors, Sylvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth, at Johns Hopkins University in the early ’70s. They studied babies who had varying degrees of “attachment” to their parents. The children who were the most securely attached as infants had turned out, as they grew up, to be the most independent. Researchers who examined the effects of different parenting styles concluded that the spoiling theory is utter nonsense. Prior to writing our new Attachment Parenting Book, my wife, Martha, and I reviewed all of these studies and are now able to report that children raised with what we call an attachment parenting style (basically, a type of care giving in which parents sensitively respond to the needs of their children) are more secure, happier, and less dependent. Attachment parenting, which implies knowing when to say yes and when to say no, doesn’t spoil a child; instead, it’s a system in which a baby’s needs are responded to appropriately.
The most emotionally healthy state for a child is not being independent but being interdependent. To develop emotionally healthy relationships, children need to go through three stages of development:
Dependence: From the baby’s perspective, this means, “You do it for me.” From birth through age 1, infants develop the belief that their parents will be responsive to their needs.
Independence: “I do it myself.” During a baby’s second year, parents act as facilitators, helping an exploring toddler to learn to do things independently.
Interdependence: “We do it.” This is the next stage, when a child learns to work with others to solve a problem in conjunction with them. The word interdependence may be new to you; it’s a healthier trait than dependence or independence. Interdependent people know how to get the most out of relationships. An example of an adult who has mastered interdependence as a child would be an executive who successfully leads teams of workers to achieve a common goal.
Researchers have discovered that a baby who doesn’t receive responsive care — one who’s rigidly scheduled to “cry it out” and spends a lot of alone time in a crib or playpen — develops a high level of stress hormones. This baby wouldn’t be in physiologic balance. On the other hand, an attachment-parented infant is held frequently in the arms of a caregiver responding to the child’s needs, and as a result, the infant grows up in a state of hormonal balance. The caregiver actually enhances a baby’s physiologic well-being.
Besides being biochemically balanced, attachment-parented babies are emotionally comforted through a concept called person permanence. A baby’s developing brain is like a giant file cabinet. Compared with a child who does not get responsive care, an attachment-parented baby produces a larger “file” of attachment scenes, such as, “When I cry, I get comforted,” “When I get hungry, I get fed,” and, “When I’m lonely, I get picked up.” Over time, such a baby develops a larger file of attachment scenes and the sense of security that accompanies them. This baby then has a mental picture of her mother, father, and other nurturing caregivers. Because she’s able to carry these attachment scenes and mental pictures with her, even when her caregivers are out of sight, she’s able to crawl and walk away (becoming independent, and, eventually, interdependent) from them sooner than an insecurely attached baby, who will often develop a clinging strategy to keep caregivers close.
One final note from the Sears parenting “laboratory”: I’ve noticed in my family that our high-need children — those who had a lot of pick-me-up responsive parenting when they were young — have become my most independent children. It works!