When the ideas of attachment parenting were being developed in the 1960’s or so, the advice was fairly ‘gender neutral’.

Later however data started to accumulate that baby boys’ needs were different from that of girls. Not qualitatively but quantitatively. Male babies on average have greater difficulty self-regulating their emotional state and therefore have a greater reliance on emotional support. They need it both more intensely and for a longer period than girls.₁

In essence, mothers need to work harder with their boys than their girls.₂

It seems that that boys’ brains develop more slowly_{3 ,} and are more vulnerable to negative outside influences, […]

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who works as a pre-school teacher. She asserted that she could tell an ‘attachment parented’ child from across the room.

“They are generally so much more calm and empathic! They will tend to go over and comfort a sad child. They think about what others are feeling’.

There is a lot of scientific evidence for this accumulated over many years.

One of the critical factors of being born human is being born very immature.  For good or bad, this gives the parents and carers the opportunity to mould the baby’s brain as it […]