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There are three basic assumptions about human nature that are reflected in parenting philosophies. The first is the assumption that a child is born evil by nature and the parent is a disciplinarian and trainer. The goal of parent education is to learn how to direct and control the child's inherent sinful nature and willfulness. This approach maintains that respect must precede love and often accepts physical punishment as appropriate. The main proponents of this parenting style throughout history have been John Wesley, James Dobson and the Puritan tradition. The second approach, espoused by Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Gordon, states that children are inherently good and trains parents as communicators and teachers of human relation skills. The third approach views the child as neutral and the parents as environmental engineers. The child is thought of as a "tabula rasa" (literally a blank tablet) to be shaped by either a good or poor environment. This is the approach of behavior modification and positive reinforcement as taught by John Locke and B. F. Skinner.

In the last few years there has developed a dichotomy between two very distinct parenting styles: one classified as "baby-led", the other as "parent-led". In the parent-led model the family and the marriage are of prime importance, not the child. Order, stability and routine are highly valued. Parents are instructed to "train" their infants to sleep through the night by 8 weeks of age and never to co-sleep. This method claims that the child will be happier, physically and psychological healthier, and more prepared for life's challenges when self discipline is learned early in life. Although the parents' task may initially be hard, schedules and routine will make the parents' lives much easier. It is geared in respect rather than unconditional love.

The alternate approach of baby-led parenting has often been called "attachment parenting". With this approach infants are breastfed on demand, have great flexibility with little or no schedules, are responded to immediately, and often sleep with their parents. Advocates of this method of parenting claim that the child is happier, physically and psychologically healthier, and more prepared for life's challenges when the individual spirit is nourished and supported. Breastfeeding certainly appears much easier and more natural with this approach. However this approach does give a less ordered and predictable life-style for parents. Some individual infants or children may also need more structure.

Co-sleeping (an infant sleeping with his or her parents, especially the mother) is a particular issue of contention between these two approaches. Although Western culture assumes that individuality and appropriate growth and development are predicated on early independence, and that sleeping alone is an early milestone of independence, history and most world cultures do not hold this view.

We are just now learning that infant physiology is designed to work in concert with mother's physiology, necessitating close proximity of mother and infant, both during the day and during sleep. Breastfeeding and co-sleeping are part of the same adaptive complex designed by natural selection over million of years of human evolution. Because human infants are born neurologically immature and develop slowly, continuous contact with the mother served to maximize the chances of infant survival and hence parental reproductive success. Only in the last one to two hundred years, and only in Western industrialized societies, have we come to think of breastfeeding and infant sleep location as two separate phenomenon.