EM, I did all those things you wrote with my kids too. I didn't know it was called attachment parenting. I looked at the link Rainbowzz provided and it is about William Sears, who was the author of a very popular baby book when my kids were infants. My first baby was born in Berkeley, CA, and everyone I knew there did those things. I remember we called sleeping together "co-sleeping" or "the family bed." I found it very natural to sleep with the baby in the bed between me and my H. It was so easy when they got hungry at night to feed them. I could nurse lying down and hardly even have to wake up to get the baby on the breast. My babies both hated the slings, though! With my first, she liked to ride on my back instead. She was very active and inquisitive and liked to be up high on my back so she could look out and see everything. I also let them wean on demand: first daughter nursed until age 3 and a half, when her little sister was born. Second daughter only nursed until 1.

My parents did not raise me that way at all. They felt it was best to withhold affection and comfort from the baby because otherwise the child would become spoiled. When I had my first baby and my dad saw how loving I was to her, he told me that "show no affection" was the popular philosophy at the time, in a widely read baby book. He told me he really regretted having to do that (there seemed to be societal pressure? he had to follow my mom's lead?) and wished it had been different. That was a really healing moment for me. (My mother has never told me anything of the sort.)