Attachment parenting – attachment marrying

Attachment parenting is becoming quite popular, if only as a parenting buzz word. It earned a recent Time magazine cover and a corresponding SMH story attracted hundreds of comments.

A recent article in The Catholic Herald published by the Catholic Diocese of Arlington, Virginia contained a fresh perspective on atachment. 

It is written by Elizabeth Foss, a homeschooler and Charlotte Mason devotee. Elizabeth, as an undergraduate at the university of Virginia was taught by Mary Ainsworth, a Canadian psychologist known for her work with respect to emotional attachment between parents and their children.

The article begins with a disturbing statistic - most divorces occur when the kids are old enough to leave home. The parents are left behind to find, adopting the words of Pink Floyd, that "we have grown older and we have grown colder and nothing is very much fun anymore".  Elizabeth anecdotally recalls a vividly seared memory of the collapse of a seeming successful marriage in such circumstances. Marriages ending this way mirror the slow collapse of a star:

“[Such] marriages die the slow death of emotional distance over time."

She further comments on one contributing cause of this

"Marriages fail because spouses are not attached to one another. Marriages fail because couples reach out to one another and find no one there.”

Elizabeth the suggests that ‘attachment theory’ should be capable of being extended to marriage, because couples like children need to know that someone is there for them:

“They need to know that when the winds blow, they can find safe harbor in each other’s arms. They need to know that God has brought them together to be ministers to one another and that He won’t abandon them in their earnest seeking to shelter each other’s souls.”

I commented in an earlier post about Monsignor David Bohr’s excellent book ‘The Diocesan Priest’. One chapter of the book discusses the indelible mark left upon the priest’s soul upon the conferring of Holy Orders. ‘Indelible’ such a powerful word, reminiscent of baptism, and no doubt an awesome and fearful experience for a young priest. Elizabeth develops a similar idea in relation to the sacrament of marriage (which of course binds for life), which creates a bond between the souls of the wedded, and which can be enhanced by attachment:

“We [Catholics] believe that the sacrament of matrimony confers grace. We also believe that it forges a bond between husband and wife. With this bond, a moral change occurs in our very souls. We are called to cling to one another. To attach. Sacramental marriage is attachment at its healthy best.”

She then finishes by reminding the reader of the importance of the attachment between parents. I remember reading parenting books emphasising the importance of the child seeing that their mother’s and father’s first love (after God) is between themselves. Elizabeth puts an attachment spin on this idea:

“We often think of the attachment between mother and child as the deepest human attachment. Perhaps we should reconsider. In marriage, God calls a man and a woman to a deep and permanent union where they can cooperate with Him to bring new life into the world. They are called to grow ever closer to one another and to God as they live sacrament day to day in their homes, secure in the knowledge that marriage itself is a channel of divine grace. They create an enduring domestic Church, a haven of secure love, and together they are a testament of faith to the world.”

Elizabeth Foss has a strong internet presence and lots of valuable resources for attachment parenting and homeschooling at elizabethfoss.com