Baby and Child Care, the African Way....

I've just been reading a New York Times piece by Dayo Olopade: 

"Baby and Child Care, the African Way"
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/african-hands-off-parenting-breeds-resilience-in-kids/?ref=global-home 

and thought it might be of interest. 

She writes that "children here in Kenya and in other African countries are endowed with a lot more freedom and responsibility than their counterparts in wealthier regions of the world." She posits and cites positive outcomes that she thinks are a result of this independence.

One issue I have with this article are the judgements and misunderstandings about different parenting styles.  Attachment parenting is standard in Africa.  Attachment parenting means not being child-centered. On the contrary, it involves including your child in the real adult world and paying attention to their biological needs. Freedom and a long leash go in hand with that because the family trusts the child to be a capable human being, not prone to random acts of self-injury.

So, I did some further research on attachment parenting, and these two books have influenced countless parents on how to raise children:

http://www.continuum-concept.org/cc_defined.html

http://www.ttfuture.org/files/2/members/sym_jcp_birth.pdf 

Joseph Chilton Pearce's book, The Magical Child, has very interesting research.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about this parenting approach, recommended by Dr. William Sears, as questioned in the recent TIME magazine article. As always, there are several shades of gray which can be misguided by journalists.