Immediate placement, after birth, in their mothers' arms: Liedloff comments that the common hospital protocol of immediately separating a newborn from its mother may hormonally disrupt the mother, possibly explaining high rates of postpartum depression;
Constant carrying or physical contact with other people in the several months after birth, as these adults go about their day-to-day business ; this forms a strong basis of personal security for infants, according to Liedloff, from which they will begin developing a healthy drive for independent exploration by eventually starting to naturally creep, and then crawl, usually at six to eight months; She calls this the "In-Arms" phase.
Sleeping in the parents' bed, in constant physical contact, until leaving of their own volition ;
Breastfeeding "on cue"—involving infants' bodily signals being immediately answered by their mothers' nursing them;
Caregivers' immediate response to the infants' urgent body signals, without judgment, displeasure, or invalidation of the children's needs, but also not showing any undue concern or focusing on or overindulging the children;
Sensing elders' expectations that the infants are innately social and cooperative and have strong self-preservation instincts, and that they are welcome and worthy
Compensatory responses
Liedloff suggests that when certain evolutionary expectations are not met as infants and toddlers, compensation for these needs will be sought, by alternate means, throughout life, resulting in many forms of mental and social disorders. She also argues that these expectations are largely distorted, neglected, and/or not properly met in civilized cultures which have removed themselves from the natural evolutionary process, resulting in the aforementioned abnormal psychological and social conditions. Liedloff's recommendations fit in more generally with evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, and the philosophy known as the Paleolithic lifestyle: optimizing well-being by living more like our hunter-gathererancestors, who Liedloff refers to as "evolved" humans, since their lifeways developed through natural selection by living in the wild.
Documentary
The continuum concept featured on television in the UK in the 2007 Channel 4 series . It was chosen as one of three influential parenting "methods" of the 20th century which a number of new parents tested out.
