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Attachment Parenting : You're Mom Enough Without It

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The latest cover of TIME magazine (5/21/12) with the beautiful 20something mom breastfeeding her 3 year old son had me shaking my head. What WAS she thinking taking that picture, and having her full name on the magazine cover? Ten years from now her son is going to have to face his friends when they ask him what it was like to suck his mother's breasts. Because they have proof. A million covers of TIME magazine, internet pages and downloads later. Really. The social insensitivity of that photo takes my breath away. As for the topic, the so-called Attachment Parenting style advocated by Dr. Bill Sears, well. That, too, has it's serious problems. Let me be brief: Attachment Theory describes the emotional or relational attachment between a developing infant and mother. It was first studied in depth by John Bowlby (and later by Ainsworth, Main, Cassidy, Hazan, Shaver, and others) in the 1950's. It posits that the emotional attachment between mother and child is the main

Monogamy: It's Not for Everybody

Back in the day when I performed weddings, starry-eyed couples would come to my church office to do premarital counseling and plan their (elaborate) wedding ceremony. I guess I never stopped to consider it much, but I assumed, as did they, that the promise to be "faithful until death parts us" was seriously considered and solemnly promised before and during the wedding service. They only had eyes for one another. Yet, I knew that about half of all the weddings I would perform over the years would end in divorce. That statistic didn't stop anybody, it seemed, from being certain about themselves. We can do it, the couple assumed. We can be each others' partner for life. I now have been in the marriage counseling field for 8 years, and practicing full-time for 6. It's not a lot of experience, but believe me: it's enough. Enough to feel like I have a new sense of the difficulties of pledging a life-long partnership, and the challenge of not only growing and ag

Help! I Don’t Love My In-Laws

My latest contribution to the GoodTherapy.org website. Help! I Don’t Love My In-Laws

The Power of Suggestion

I really want a new Etch A Sketch. And so, it seems, do a million other baby boomers. Amazing, the power of a familiar image, in this case, a toy, being used in political speech. Ohio Art's stock value rose 100% today. Oh, my familiars. We children of the 1960's. Would that we could harness all our collective nostalgia, work ethic and imagination for good! We could make this economy sing! Instead, we are paying off our mortgages, paying our children's college loans, welcoming them back home after graduation, and helping our parents stay in their fabulous retirement communities as long as humanly possible. We are this nation's backbone. And I'm proud to be one of Us.

So What

For all the talk in America now and forever about how spiritually diverse we are as a nation, it seems that many people have been lying to the researchers. Or just maybe have been trying to spare their mother's feelings and no longer feel they should. Here are the surprising statistics I found as I was thumbing through my latest The Lutheran magazine (3/2012, p. 8):   44% told the Baylor University (Waco, TX) Religion Survey that they spend no time seeking out eternal wisdom.    19% said it was 'useless to search for meaning.'    28% told LifeWay that it's not a 'major priority' in my life to find my deeper purpose. One of the most striking trends in religion statistics in recent decades is the rise of the Nones , people who checked "no religious identity" on the American Religious Identification Survey. The Nones went from 8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.  So, while America grows increasingly vocal on the edges of the religious landscape, t