There are many parents who come to attachment parenting after growing up in non-empathic or abusive situations. This can make Mother's Day and Father's Day difficult to navigate, with conflicting feelings.

Dr. Fahmida Zamon talks about this in her article The Mother's Day Taboo: When Mama Ain't So Great.

"The daughter of an unloving mother—one who is emotionally distant, withholding or inconsistent, or even hypercritical or cruel—learns different lessons about the world and herself. The underlying problem the significant dependence a human infant has on her mother for nurture and survival. What results is an insecure attachment, characterized as either “ambivalent” (the child does not know whether the good mommy or the bad one will show up) or “avoidant” (the daughter wants her mother’s love but is afraid of the consequences of seeking it). Ambivalent attachment teaches a child that the world of relationship is unreliable; avoidant attachment sets up a terrible conflict between the child’s needs both for her mother’s love and for protection against her mother’s emotional or physical abuse."