I came to parenting the way most of us do - knowing nothing and trying to learn everything.

I have a neuroscience background - that's what my doctorate is in - and I was trained to study hormones of attachment so I definitely feel my parenting is informed by that.

I've become sort of an accidental advocate for attachment parenting which is a style of parenting that... basically the way mammals parent and the way people have parented for pretty much all of human history except the last 200 years or so.

Attachment parenting is not a passive parenting style.

Relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose.

We must return optimism to our parenting. To focus on the joys not the hassles the love not the disappointments the common sense not the complexities.

Parenting as an unpaid occupation outside the world of public power entails lower status less power and less control of resources than paid work.

Ah the power of two. There's nothing quite like it. Especially when it comes to paying utility bills parenting cooking elaborate meals purchasing a grown-up bed jumping rope and lifting heavy machinery. The world favours pairs. Who wants to waste the wood building an ark for singletons?

My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale New York society woman best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book 'Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers' - this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford's wire hangers look like pool noodles.

I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.