For Immediate Release
Contact: Samantha Gray
Telephone: 800-850-8320
Email: media at attachmentparenting dot org
Nashville, TN – October 11, 2010 – Carrying your baby in a sling, wrap, or other soft carrier, commonly referred to as babywearing, has grown in popularity beyond cultures that have practiced it successfully for millennium and beyond the communities of parents who practice a style of parenting called attachment parenting. Many parents are experiencing the developmental benefits of babywearing firsthand: less crying, security of attachment and healthy physical development. Carrying their babies close to them in a wrap, carrier or sling continues to be the saving grace for providing comfort and closeness for a growing little ones while providing parents some freedom for daily tasks. The lifesaving skin-to-skin contact called Kangaroo Care or KC, that so many premature infants need, continues to be facilitated at home by the practice of babywearing. The physiological and emotional benefits of touch and physical closeness for all infants are long; babywearing's place as a common parenting practice is secured. Attachment Parenting International (API) is among the very few national organizations that support parents who choose to use babywearing as a means of building strong emotional connections and overall healthier children.
API is pleased to announce the release of a comprehensive new brochure with babywearing tips and safety considerations when parents use a baby sling, soft carrier, or wrap. This brochure, Close to Your Heart: Tips and Safety Information for Infant Babywearing, has just been released to aid local parent educators, parent support groups, childbirth centers and educators, hospitals and health departments, and the babywearing community. API's important safety information addresses:
These guidelines inform and empower parents to ask questions of themselves in order to better avoid unnecessary risk to their babies, a good practice to implement before using any infant product.
The Close to Your Heart brochure is available now, free of charge as a download or for a nominal cost through the API online store at www.attachmentparenting.org and will be accompanied by a free upcoming online babywearing webinar, and other helpful online resources available at the API website, made possible with support from sponsors Moby Wrap, Baby K'tan and Balboa Baby. In addition, API will be the nonprofit sponsor and be participating in the Mothering Magazine (www.mothering.com) online Twitter party Thursday, October 14 at 7:00 pm PST, answering questions on the topic of babywearing, hashtag #mmag.
API advocates babywearing as a practice that contributes to one of API's Eight Principles of Parenting that focuses on the importance of fostering nurturing touch – for optimal infant development, parent-child connection, and convenience. The evidence of the impact of touch in the developing attachment relationship is born out in numerous studies. In one Babywearing study, of those infants who were carried in a soft carrier during the first year of life, 80% were identified as securely attached by the researchers, whereas only 38% of those infants carried in plastic infant seats were identified as securely attached.
Babies are born with urgent, intense physical and emotional needs; completely dependent on others to help them. Nurturing touch helps meet a baby's need for physical contact, affection, security, stimulation and movement, all of which encourage proper neurological development and secure attachment. Slings and other soft baby carriers help parents foster nurturing touch in a simple and practical way; parents can keep babies close and safe while having hands free to do other things. Soft baby carriers also help parents avoid the overuse of devices such as strollers, swings, and car seats that can negatively affect parent-child relationship as well as increase the potential for plageocephaly, or "flat head syndrome" that is increasingly becoming more common in the US.
API urges parents to use good judgment regarding the safety of their children. API is committed to supporting the safety and health of children by providing the most current safety information available for parents practicing babywearing. While there are no definitive guidelines for babywearing safety that are backed by controlled testing, API believes that until they are available it is important to orient parents to known safety precautions and long-held babywearing experience.
Attachment Parenting is based in the practice of nurturing parenting methods that create strong emotional bonds, also known as secure attachment, between the infant and parent(s). This style of parenting encourages responsiveness to children's emotional needs, enabling children to develop trust that their needs will be met. As a result, this strong attachment helps children develop the capacity for secure, empathic, peaceful, and enduring relationships that follow them into adulthood.
Attachment Parenting International (API) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit member organization founded in 1994 to network with parents, professionals and like-minded organizations around the world. API is grateful to an impressive group of board and advisory board members for supporting parents and API's mission, www.attachmentparenting.org.