Attachment Parenting: Mayim Bialik Is Tired Of Defending The Practice

Mayim Bialik is getting tired of explaining and defending her personal parenting choices.

It seems the 37-year-old mother of two, divorcee, vegan, author, and actress – best known for her roles in Blossom and The Big Bang Theory – is getting weary of being the figurehead of attachment parenting. At the very least, she’s put off with people who want to argue with her about it.

The PhD holder in neuroscience is a notably huge proponent of a controversial style of parenting that calls for co-sleeping with kids, a prolonged stage of breastfeeding, and “wearing” a child for long periods of time.

She’s even penned a book about it entitled Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way.

The actress was quoted in UPI saying, “Just because I’m a public person, who happened to have breastfed and slept with her kids, that doesn’t mean that I want to fight with you on the street or in the supermarket. So, I think you have to be really careful to understand why people want to know what they want to know.”

People seem more inclined to spur an argument about the topic than to ask advice.

In November 2012, Mayim and her husband Michael Stone – the father of their two sons Fred and Miles – announced that they were divorcing, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized in May 2013.

Many suggested the break up was predicated on Mayim’s extreme parenting style, but those rumors were quickly quelled by the actress herself who opened up publicly about the split.

Attachment parenting attracts harsh criticism and strong emotional opinions – as parenting itself is a very sensitive topic.

In May’s 2012 issue of Time, the cover was emblazoned with a lovely, young blonde mother, 26-year-old Jamie Grumet – another adamant practitioner of attachment parenting – who posed with her 3-year-old son, Aram, as he stood on a little chair and breastfed.

TODAY.com reported more than 131,000 people voted on their poll about the cover: 27 percent saying “It’s great!” and 73 percent saying, “Eh, I don’t really want to see that.” Many respondents indicated the breastfeeding itself was not offensive but found the age of the child awkward in context, as by the age of 3, children are typically long weaned from the teat and have moved along to a more solid diet.

Grumet, like Mayim, had to explain her choice to millions of viewers and readers.

[Image via Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com]