Lately I have been thinking a lot about independence. It's partly because Jun is becoming a toddler and independence discussions are part of it. What I am noticing is that there is a big confusion in using the word independence when talking about babies and toddlers. Here I am mostly taking about discussions in the family or between parents (here I exempt the psychologists and other scientists who have clear definitions of this term). Going back to my point…on one hand we talk about “functional independence” (I know the word is mostly used for handicapped children, but it seems to best describe what I mean), which is supposed to be reflected in child’s ability to walk, get dressed, eat alone, help with the household chores, stand up for himself etc. of course depending on his age and developmental stage and on the other hand we talk about emotional independence, which basically means that a child can self-soothe, fall asleep alone, stay away from parents for prolonged periods of time, etc..
In our culture both meanings are often being “squeezed” into one word, namely independence. And since independence is on of the highly valued skills in our culture, we are urged to force our children to sleep in their own room, to self-soothe and fall asleep by themselves, to wean from the breast, start walking and so on. And we do this with our best intentions, thinking that we are doing our kids a big favor. It sounds simple and logical: if independence is important for one’s success in life, why not teaching him independence as early as possible.
But humans are complex and there are slightly more complicated processes behind all this. There are numerous studies explaining how parenting practices and child-rearing approaches influence human brain and some of them have been beautifully explained in the
Sunderland’s book What every parent needs to know.
Some interesting findings are also described in Commons’s and Miller’s paper (both from Harvard Medical School). Just to give you a hint, here is a short quote from their epilogue:
“One implication is that cultures that train for independence, and therefore self-responsibility,risk having more PTSD (post-traumatic-stress-disporder) later in life. That is because these cultures do not support infants (nor adults) during stressful and traumatic events to the same extent as do cultures that emphasize dependence and mutual support. Whether distressed or not, Individuals are isolated or separated and do not experience as much physical contact, which is known to be soothing (it has been shown to reduce blood pressure and so on). Early stressful practices may produce lasting effects, as these areas of the brain are still developing. As has been suggested by numerous investigators, the pathways that remain in place after early development are very determined by experience (as summarized in Todd et al., 1995). There may therefore be permanent alterations in stress-related neurotransmitter systems (such as the release of higher levels of cortisol).”
To conclude, I just wanted to show that it is great that we are helping our children to become independent in terms of "technical" or "functional" skills. But this does by no means imply that we should force them into emotional independence before their time. By practicing child-led-weaning (in all aspects: weaning from breast, sleeping and self-soothing, being separated from parents during the day, etc.) we can help to raise highly independent and emotinally stable individuals that will be able to better manage stress and trauma later in life.
As Sunderland (2006) beautifully says: "Perhaps fuelled by a fear of our own dependency, our parenting traditions can push children into early separations." (p. 52)
A fantastic documentary by 
As you probably noticed there is a countless number of books on pregnancy, birth and babies available on the market. They are often written by authors, who are not necessarily specialised in parenting and developmental psychology. There are many baby trainers out there giving detachment advice like "Get him on a schedule", "Don'ty carry her in a sling so much", "You shouldn't breastfeed for more than 10 min", "He should sleep through the night at 4 months" or "You should let her cry until she falls a sleep" and other quick-fix solutions. Such advice can lead to a short-term success but we should be aware of the long-term consequences of our parenting style. With the advances in neuro science, brain scans and developmental psychology we shouldn't be ignorant anymore. As parents we have a responsibility to educate ourselves. However, we should be careful when choosing our literature and other sources. 
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