Christian attachment parenting: Upholding the Christian tradition

Many parents today still support punitive parenting. This is a common attitude amongst American parents. Most American parents today support authoritative parenting, which usually entails time-out, and maybe an occasional disciplinary spanking. Child punishment is mistakenly seen by many parents as part of this country's valid Christian tradition. The fact of the matter is that punitive parenting of children is not part of our traditions. Christian attachment parenting is part of our traditions.

America is a Christian nation, founded upon Judeo-Christian family values, with many of those values already enshrined into law. The Bible is the highest founding document of this country, above even the Constitution itself. Nowhere in the Bible does it legitimately say to spank or punish a child. Where the rod is mentioned, it would have been interpreted by the ancients to refer to the rod of correction in the 40 minus 1 lashes, meaning judicial corporal punishment instead of domestic corporal punishment. The Early Christians never practiced corporal punishment towards children of any kind.

Christian attachment parenting is based off of the Christian doctrine of mutual submission. See Colossians 3:20-21 KJV:

Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. 

The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and refers to secure, vulnerable rest in the love and grace of parents. Children are to rest securely in the sacrifice of parents, just as parent believers rest securely in the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Parents are to be extensions of Christ in the family home, dutifully and selflessly submitting to children just as they would to God, expecting absolutely nothing in return, with children resting safely and securely in the wake of the submission of parents. Parents are to submit to children as their enemy, from beneath yet from above, revering and fearing children as vulnerable extensions of God. 

The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to damages or offenses, namely the slighrest of personal offense perceived by a child, including, but not limited to, the slightest of offensive touch or speech perceived by a child, stemming from entitlement. This commandment was intended by the Apostle Paul, and understood in its original context, as a moral statute prohibiting all forms of punitive parenting, including any punishments or controlling demeanor towards children. In the Old Testament, punitive parents were put to death by way of bloodletting, after punishing their children one last time. Parents who punished their children were charged with kidnapping, with "kidnapping" being defined under the Law as the slightest of damages or offenses stemming from hostage-taking - child punishment was seen in biblical times as holding your child hostage merely for things they did wrong, thereby treating your child as a quartered slave. Paul here was lifting up the Law in order to convict a group of Greek Christian parents who brought their pagan custom of spanking and punishing children into the church. Paul, contrary to popular legend, was anti-spanking, and opposed any and all punishment of a child in his writings.

Christian attachment parenting is attachment parenting that emulates the Early Christian context. In the Early Church, children were righteously pampered by their parents. Children up until age 6 were in constant closeness with their mothers. Children never left the side of mothers, and were frequently held by mothers. Mother and child were naked in the family home, with children being naked wherever they went until they became adults. This birth nudity was intended to make it easier for young children to receive skin-on-skin comfort and sustenance, as well as to hasten the bonding process between mother and child. Secure bonding takes place best in an environment where both the mother and the child are naked. When mothers went out and about, they swaddled their young children under their dress and next to their bosom, in swaddling blankets - even with children as old as age 6, to give them sustaining skin-on-skin warmth.

By the time children were around age 6, they started, on their own accord, to squirm out of the arms of their mothers, and venture places far from home, playing outside with neighborhood friends, but then retreating to the sustaining warmth of mothers, in the form of skin-on-skin co-sleeping. Children usually slept next to mothers late into childhood, and sought out their own place to sleep only come the onset of puberty. When children started sleeping on their own independently, parents knew it was only a matter of time before children shook them off completely and sought to move out of the house. In the Early Church, the church communities respected Roman law, which set the age of majority at age 13. 

America is a Christian nation. We were founded with a secular government, balanced by a religious society, with our national religion being Christianity, with all of the denominations within the faith. Christian attachment parenting was practiced in the context of both the Old and New Testament. We as a nation glean from the biblical context, and thus Christian attachment parenting is American parenting. 

The depraved and entitled parents who provoke their children to anger through punitive parenting will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them be forever cast into the lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the second death prepared for Satan and his accomplices! Let them descend into the abyss which is the ever-burning Hell of fire and torment, suffering God's Wrath forever and ever! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!