Mayim Bialik’s Attachment Parenting Philosophy Leads To Confrontations

Mayim Bialik, the current Big Bang Theory and former Blossom star, has found herself continually confronted in public about the parenting choices she’s made and shares via Jewish parenting blog Kveller, but Bialik isn’t interested in the fight.

“If I’m talking to girlfriends, if I’m talking to random people, and we’re talking about parenting, I tell them what works for me and why. But a lot of people want to ask me things so that they can fight with me,” Bialik said. “And just because I’m a public person, who happened to have breastfed and slept with her kids, that doesn’t mean that I want to fight with you on the street or in the supermarket. So, I think you have to be really careful to understand why people want to know what they want to know.”

Bialik practices attachment parenting, a parenting philosophy that purports to foster a unique bond between parent and child by keeping the child close during their formative years. It includes the practice of carrying a child in a sling as opposed to pushing them in a stroller, nursing them into their early childhood and having them sleep in the same bed.

“Obviously the notion of an older child nursing is very strange to some people. In certain cultures it’s not. And I was very careful about when and how I chose to breastfeed my older child,” Bialik continued. “I put a lot of boundaries and limits around it and again took the guidance of women who had sort of walked this path before me. I think the notion of breastfeeding at all is still very controversial in some circles."

Bialik is a mother to two boys – Fred, 4, and Miles, 7 – that she had with ex-husband Michael Stone, whom she divorced this past May. When she announced earlier in the year that she was just then weaning Fred, she received ample backlash from disgusted fans. She claims to make an effort to support other women she sees breastfeeding their children who might be older than what many people are comfortable with.

Bialik, who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience, wrote a book about her controversial parenting style in 2009 entitled Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way.

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