More Parenting Redundancy.

I am far from perfect.

I make the same mistakes everyone else makes, and I am about to embark on the great experiment that is parenting.  I don't know what I'm doing, or how to avoid the landmines that are surely embedded in the safest looking parts of the road, but I can guess.  That's really all life is; a series of educated guesses.
I can employ my logic and my intuition - though the two seem to fight more often than not - or I can use the great power of Ignorance: choosing to believe whatever I read first.

The latter option is easiest.

So, for a totally ungraceful transition: I read the Times article everyone is so frenzied over.

"Have you seen the Times cover picture!?"

GASP!  It's so dirty!

I heard about the cover from the security guard at work, and from a few others.  Generally they said something very close to the above statement and expressed their shock over the inappropriate nature of the image.

Here's my problem with it: that lady is very smug.
It's like she's looking at you and saying, "look what I can do.  And I'm better than you for it."

The actual article was well-rounded in my opinion.  Towards the end it turned into a short biography of Dr. Sears, the man who wrote the book about attachment parenting that gets so much praise and hatred.
I laughed, and I was genuinely interested in what it had to say.  Nothing in it was really bias as far as I gathered; the author did a fairly good job of presenting the piece from a neutral angle.  I enjoyed it mostly for this because it's hard to find in a magazine.

What I really gathered from the article is that Attachment Parenting is certainly synonymous with Natural Parenting, and in my view, Logical Parenting.  I will one day read the book Dr. Sears wrote (when I get my hands on it) to see what all the hubbub is about because, right now, I just don't see it.

It serves as a sort of looking glass into the polarization of the parenting/birth debate.  There is one side or the other, I have met no middle ground.  And I cannot seem to have a conversation with someone opposed to home birth or natural parenting (things like co-sleeping, breast-feeding, and baby-carrying) without leaving it frustrated.
Why are these things bad?  I just don't get it.
I'm not saying that anyone is to blame for these unsatisfactory conversations - surely the blame is equally distributed if we must play the game - but it would be nice to understand why people consider these things wrong.
Drinking breast milk is no stranger than drinking cow's milk, or goat's milk.  In fact, it's probably less strange to have a gallon of breast milk in your fridge, if you really think about it.  There's a stigma here, and it's very strong.  I write about it being less strange to pour breast milk on your cereal (a friend of mine's ex-husband used to do this) but the honest truth is that I do think it's kinda weird.  The question is why is cow's breast milk any less weird?

I digress.

The point here is that it's kind of silly to not have a middle ground.  We could probably learn something from each-other if we could communicate more effectively.

As a side note.
If you're not easily offended, watch this.  It's hilarious.

~~~

Sorry for the small hiatus.  I caught a cold/sinus infection last week and subsequently had the motivation to do nothing but sleep and stay on the couch.
Being pregnant and sick is only conducive to apathy.

Also, it sucks.