Brain-Based Parenting: The Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment

In this groundbreaking exploration of the brain mechanisms behind healthy caregiving, attachment specialist Daniel A. Hughes and veteran clinical psychologist Jonathan Baylin guide readers through the intricate web of neuronal processes, hormones and chemicals that driveand sometimes thwartour caregiving impulses, uncovering the mysteries of the parental brain.

The biggest challenge to parents, Hughes and Baylin explain, is learning how to regulate emotions that arisefeeling them deeply and honestly while staying grounded and aware enough to preserve the parentchild relationship. Stress, which can lead to blocked or dysfunctional care, can impede our brains inherent caregiving processes and negatively impact our ability to do this. While the parentchild relationship can generate deep empathy and the intense motivation to care for our children, it can also trigger self-defensive feelings rooted in our early attachment relationships, and give rise to unparental impulses.

Learning to be a good parent is contingent upon learning how to manage this stress, understand its brain-based cues and respond in a way that will set the brain back on track. To this end, Hughes and Baylin define five major systems of caregiving as theyre linked to the brain, explaining how they operate when parenting is strong and what happens when good parenting is compromised or blocked. With this awareness, we learn how to approach kids with renewed playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy, re-regulate our caregiving systems, foster deeper social engagement and facilitate our childrens development.

Infused with clinical insight, illuminating case examples and helpful illustrations, Brain-Based Parenting brings the science of caregiving to light for the first time. Far from just managing our childrens behaviour, we can develop our parenting brains, and with a better understanding of the neurobiological roots of our feelings and our own attachment histories, we can transform a fraught parent-child relationship into an open, regulated and loving one.