William Penton Sears (born December 9, 1939), also referred to as Dr. Bill, is an American pediatrician and the author or co-author of parenting books.
After graduating high school, he studied to become a priest at University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary but dropped out due to his desire to raise a family.
According to Sears, he concluded that babywearing was essential to promoting a healthy bond between mothers and infants after interviewing two women from Zambia at an international parenting conference.
[4] Sears later said that he developed many of his ideas after reading Jean Liedloff's 1975 book The Continuum Concept, which claimed that children raised among the indigenous peoples of South America were more well behaved than their Western counterparts due to be carried constantly during infancy.
Sears' advocacy of co-sleeping[3] put him at odds with Richard Ferber who advised parents to let their children self-soothe by crying themselves to sleep.
In April 2005, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division deemed that the ads misleadingly implied "that the Gummies are low in sugar and are a nutritional alternative to fruits and vegetables".
[14] Sears' works promote the practice of attachment parenting, which emphasizes the importance of emotional availability and accessibility.