Mayim Bialik Divorce Brings Attention To Controversial Idea Of Attachment Parenting

Mayim Bialik says that her divorce is in no way related to her practice of attachment parenting, a controversial style of child rearing that calls for parents to be unusually connected to their children.

Still, her divorce has left many wondering if attachment parenting might do more harm for families than good.

Attachment parenting is based on the idea that a child forms a strong emotional bond with caregivers during childhood, so parenting must always be sensitive and emotionally available to the needs of the child. For Mayim Bialik that has meant public breastfeeding of her then 3-year-old on a busy subway and blogging and writing about her parenting choices.

As Time’s Family Matters blog notes, Mayim Bialik’s use of attachment parenting isn’t itself criticized as much as her zeal for the style.

Family Matters blogger Bonnie Rochman notes: “Bialik implies that those of us who choose not to embrace AP are, as writer Allison Kaplan Sommer puts it on site Haaretz , ‘raising insecure, emotionally arrested children in an inferior, unnatural, modern way.’ ”

Rochman digs deeper into the attachment parenting style that Mayim Bialik practices:

“In the wake of her announcement, supporters and detractors are lining up on both sides. That’s partly a result of Bialik’s outspoken nature and partly a result of the passion that attachment parenting (AP) engenders. You love it or you hate it. You aspire to fulfill all its tenets (let’s all sleep in the family bed until the kids finish high school!) or you eschew every last one. Or, quietly as in my case, you pick and choose and reject the label. Some nights, you welcome your kid into your bed because she’s just really cute and your husband’s out of town and you love falling asleep with her small hand on your cheek. Other nights, you dig in your heels and let her cry.”

The controversy made its way to The View , where co-host Whoopi Goldberg said the fact that Bialik would sleep in bed with one son while her husband bunks with the other boy definitely contributed to the divorce.

For her part, Bialik defends her use of attachment parenting and said that it didn’t factor into her divorce.

Bialik said: “The hands-on style of parenting we practice played no role in the changes that led to this decision: relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose.”

Bialik cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for her divorce, court documents released on Friday revealed. The documents also show that Mayim Bialik is seeking joint legal and physical custody with husband Michael Stone of their two sons, Miles, 7 and Fred, 4.