Balance, as in balance between family and personal time, is an elusive component in parenthood. I, as well as any mother I know, have been chasing the perfect balance since my first trimester of my first pregnancy. I have learned many lessons through the years on how to balance parenthood, career, marriage, and me time. But still, it seems that any formula for balance that I find only works for a few weeks before something – illness, car needs repair, a giant work project, and so on – forces me to throw all up in the air again and re-organize.

I was shocked to hear of actress Mayim Bialik’s divorce recently, just six months since the release of her parenting memoir, Beyond the Sling. Many people would say they weren’t. They would say that she was too invested in her children, in her style of parenting, to be able to sustain her marriage. And, of course, they would bring up the cosleeping as a major cause of unrest in the union.

How about that their divorce is occurring because marriage is just plain hard? No matter whether you parent this way or that. No matter whether your marriage has major relationship difficulties, such as mental illness, or not. It’s just hard. Two very different people living in close quarters – more if you add in kids – and a constant balancing and re-balancing of individual versus family versus couple priorities. That’s hard!

Everyone loves babies. We’re programmed to. It’s biological: A 2008 research study at Baylor showed that the happiness centers in our brains light up when we see a baby smiling at us.

Conversely, a 2012 study at Aarhus University showed that a baby’s cry elicits a unique, lightning-fast response in his parents to soothe the baby. We want that crying to stop. We’re wired that way.

So, it’s puzzling why there seems to be a surge of entertainment centered on crying children, particularly infants. The quiver of the lip, the shaking of the chin, the miniature pout, the glistening tears. Apparently, it’s quite adorable.

And as the child grows and those crying sessions become tantrums, these big reactions can seem downright hilarious to a lot of people. “You’re having a fit about what?!”

Making sport of crying babies – from Parenting.com’s “They’re mad, they’re sad, they’re so darn cute!” crying baby pictures to YouTube’s swarms of “cute baby crying” videos to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s challenge to parents to feign eating all their child’s Halloween candy to Japan’s crying babies festival (what!?) – seems to be taking this fixation with baby cuteness one step too far.

Sigh. Have you seen the latest Time Magazine’s coverage of the Attachment Parenting Movement? I just about spit out my cereal when I saw the cover.

Having a background in print journalism, I understand a publication’s temptation to sensationalize a story, but even I couldn’t have fathomed such a cover. It’s not so much that she’s breastfeeding, but the way it’s portrayed — very disrespectful not only to her but all breastfeeding mothers and all mothers who now question whether they’re “enough.” And many of the articles going into the package featuring attachment parenting, as well as the parenting examples they pulled from, are just as judgmental.

This is not what parenting with attachment is about. It’s not about having petty differences over specific parenting techniques. Breastfeeding toddlers versus not. Natural birth versus not. Homeschooling versus not. Not vaccinating, not circumcising, cloth diapering. None of that matters. Really, truly. It is not a requirement of parenting with attachment.

Certainly, the point of the Time Magazine package is to provide an overview of “extreme parenting,” but attachment parenting doesn’t have to be extreme. It can be mainstream parenting. Soccer moms and working parents and women who started out motherhood with a C-section can do it.

There’s a lot of talk in the news media about Attachment Parenting lately, especially with celebrity-turned-PhD Mayim Bialik’s new book, Beyond the Sling, in which she describes her brand of parenting, which does include Attachment Parenting (AP). And there are a lot of questions being asked. I’ve been fielding both concern and applause for the various conversations swirling around Mayim and AP. I wanted to give a little clarification.

First of all, what is Attachment Parenting exactly? Technically, it’s a research-backed approach to parenting that promotes securely attached kids. What’s that mean? “Attachment” is a term to describe the emotional bond between two people. A person with a secure attachment style is able to establish and maintain a healthy emotional bond with other people. A kid who is securely attached to his parent is a kid who shares a healthy emotional bond with his parent – with all the give and take of any emotionally healthy relationship. People with secure attachment styles are less affected by stress and generally happier in relationships than those with insecure attachment styles.

Research shows that parents who raise children with secure attachment in mind do two things: They provide consistent and loving care, and they respond with sensitivity. This can look different for different people. For parents who are living the natural lifestyle, this may take the form of breastfeeding and baby-led weaning, babywearing, cosleeping, and stay-at-home parenting. Of course, there are plenty of parents who do these parenting techniques who are not necessarily living a natural lifestyle, but there are also plenty of parents who bottle-feed and crib-sleep and work outside the home who are still raising their children with attachment-promoting strategies.