Attachment Theory

There is evidence that children develop better with a mother who is happy in her work, than a mother who is frustrated by staying at home - H. Rudolf Schaffer

Attachment Theory

A New Nurturing Potential Survey

[Following on from our cover picture of Emily and Katie, this picture is of Emily's mother and her brother Philip]

CONTENTS

Preamble - what is attachment?

The history and development of attachment theory

From infancy to adulthood

The implications of Attachment Theory

Appendix A - Bowlby's 44 Thieves study

Appendix B - Ainsworth's Strange Situation study

References

Preamble - What is attachment?

Attachment, in the social sense, is a bond that connects people. Typically it relates to the connection between infants and children to caregivers, usually parents. But it is also applied to friends and family members, as well as to people involved in a romantic relationship, and there has been much research on the proposition that romantic relationships may be attachment relationships.

It is, however, the first sense that we shall be mainly considering in this survey. The core of this sense is that primary caregivers who are available and responsive to an infant's needs allow the child to develop a sense of security. The infant knows that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world. Research has also revealed that attachment formed and rendered secure in infancy, tends to produce stronger self-esteem and greater self-reliance as children grow older.. These children also tend to be more independent, perform better in school, have successful social relationships, and experience less depression and anxiety.

The history and development of attachment theory.

Just about every description of attachment theory starts with John Bowlby (1907 - 1990) who originally developed the theory. He was a British psychoanalyst who was studying the effects on infants of separation from their parents. His observation of the lengths to which infants would go to avoid separation from their parents or to re-establish contact, the extreme distress exhibited by crying, screaming, clinging, suggested to him that a child's tie to its mother, and the disruption of that tie through separation, were more acceptable factors than the explanations of most psychoanalytical thought of the time.

Bowlby defined attachment as "a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings" and believed the question that has to be answered is "Is the attachment figure nearby, accessible, and attentive?" If the child perceives the answer to this question to be "yes," he or she feels loved, secure, and confident, and, behaviourally, is likely to explore his or her environment, play with others, and be sociable. If, however, the child perceives the answer to this question to be "no," the child experiences anxiety and, behaviourally, is likely to exhibit attachment behaviours ranging from simple visual searching on the low extreme to active following and vocal signalling on the other. These behaviours continue until the child is able to re-establish a desirable level of physical or psychological proximity to the attachment figure. Failure to achieve this result could lead to young children experiencing profound despair and depression.

In 1946 Bowlby took up the position of head of the Children's Department at the Tavistock Clinic in London. He promptly renamed it the Department for Children and Parents. In Maternal Care and Mental Health, that he wrote in 1950 at the behest of the World Trade Organisation, he described how he was often able to achieve clinical breakthroughs by interviewing parents about their childhood experiences in the presence of their troubled children. Based on his attachment theory, Bowlby suggested that just as a mother responds to the needs of her child, a strong affectional bond is formed. This bond becomes integrated into the child's personality and serves as a basis for all future affectional ties.

But his theory might have lacked some validity, and certainly would not have been developed to its full extent, without the collaboration of his colleague Mary Ainsworth who joined him at the Tavistock Clinic in the 1950s, after she had moved from America to London with her husband. She brought to Bowlby's work a discipline that perfectly complemented his innovative theories. Bowlby drew upon concepts from psychoanalysis, cybernetics and ethology (the science of character formation and animal behaviour) for his basic hypotheses. Mary Ainsworth added her particular methodology, making it possible to test Bowlby's theories and expand them into new directions. She "contributed the concept of the attachment figure as a secure base from which an infant can explore the world. In addition, she formulated the concept of maternal sensitivity to infant signals and its role in the development of infant-mother attachment patterns."

In treating Bowlby's affectional bond theory she proposed five criteria:

1. Affectional bonds are persistent rather than transitory.

2. Affectional bonds are centred on a specific individual.

3. The relationship involved in an affectional bond has strong emotional significance.

4. People seek contact and proximity with individuals with whom they have an affectional bond.

5. Involuntary separation from the individual leads to distress.

Ainsworth further suggested that adding a sixth criterion, namely seeking comfort and security in the relationship, turned the tie from an affectional bond into a true attachment relationship.

From infancy to adulthood

Different attachment patterns are formed between caregivers and their infant charges as the growing baby reacts to the specific responses it elicits from its demands for sustenance or attention. The adult who responds to these demands both arouses and obtains feelings of satisfaction and joy, and their responses will differ from other caregivers which will stimulate differing, selective attachment patterns in the infant.

Such selective attachments begin to form from birth. Early infancy is a critical period for their development, but there are further key stages throughout childhood. During the toddler years, mobility, play and language develop, providing opportunities to extend attachment relationships to siblings and close adults. By the age of 4 years, secure children are able to think about other people's thoughts and feelings – key to managing relationships with peers and at school.


[Emily and sibling Philip]	[Katie and sibling Jamie]

During the pre-school and primary years, secure children develop the capacity to hold the secure base relationships in mind when they are separated from them (for example, at nursery or school), providing freedom for exploration and learning.

Also during this stage, children continue to learn to manage their feelings, co-operate with others, and take into account the thoughts and feelings of others.

During adolescence, young people become increasingly confident and competent. Their thinking is more complex and more reflective. There may be experimentation with the rejection of parental norms and values and moving away from the secure base. However, family ties and the knowledge that the secure base is still available in times of difficulty remain very important.

Over time, the quality of early life experiences will influence the ability to explore the world, develop peer relationships and, ultimately, develop intimate adult relationships. Interestingly, a study of Kibbutz arrangements in Israel, where children who slept away from their parents in a house devoted to the children, and were cared for by a matapalet (a kibbutz children's nurse) found that it did not work and was eventually discontinued. It has been suggested that these children tended to form insecure attachments and to display difficulties in developing adult intimate relationships.

As a child reaches adolescence, a new dimension is given to attachment. Although the relationship between adolescents and their parents do not become less important, the adolescent becomes less dependent on the parent. The attachment bonds are "treated by many adolescents more like ties that restrain than like ties that anchor and secure, and a key task of adolescence is to develop autonomy so as no longer to need to rely (as much) on parents' support when making one's way through the world". (Allen & Land) They continue, however, to rely on the fact that parents are available for them, even though they wish to become less dependent upon them. This is when they begin to transfer their attachment from parents to peers. And this is not always an easy task for adolescents. Those that are insecure in the first place, will experience difficulty in balancing their desire for autonomy with their need for attachment. Such adolescents , with little confidence in the stability of their attachment relationships, will go into avoidance mode, wheres secure adolescents will tend to meet any problem head on and resolve it.

"Avoidance by insecure adolescents can cause future problems within attachment relationships and can lead to depression and other problems. Adolescent depression has also been related to maternal attachment insecurity. There is moodiness, tension, and emotional instability. At this point in time both the parents and child need to be sensitive to the fact that their relationship is changing, and this is impacting the attachment system dramatically. At this point, the adolescent needs their parents the most, even though the adolescent is trying to become independent from the parents.

"In conclusion, friendship attachments are important during adolescence because they are sources of emotional security and support, contexts for growth in social competence, and prototypes for later relationships." (Seiffge-Krenke, 1993).

The formation and development of attachment relationships continue through the lifespan, so that adult children's relationships with their parents will change and, for example, as adults we both care for and receive care from our partners.

[Full circle. Emily and her mother 40 years after our picture above of her mother and brother]

The implications of attachment theory

There is now an increasing amount of research that suggests that adult romantic relationships function in ways that are similar to infant-caregiver relationships, although there are, inevitably some exceptions.

If this is so, however, i.e. that adult romantic relationships are attachment relationships in the same way as are infant-caregiver relationships, then these relationships should elicit the same kinds of response as those observed by Mary Ainsworth. Ainsworth had described three main types of attachment: secure, ambivalent-insecure, and avoidant-insecure [to which Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth, which they called disorganised-insecure]. and we would expect to observe the same status in adult romantic relationships. Thus there would be adults who are secure in their relationships: confident, dependable, and dependent. Others would be insecure, worrying about their love being reciprocated, anxious that their attachment needs might be unsatisfied. Finally some would be avoidant by not being too dependent or by not having others too dependent upon themselves.

There is a clear similarity between secure infants who are well-adjusted and secure adults who are relaxed and settled in their relationships. There has been a lot of study of behavioural and psychological factors in adult bonding and attachment. It has apparently been established that secure adults are more likely than insecure adults to seek support from their partners when distressed, and they are also more likely to provide support to their distressed partners. (Feeney & Noller, 1996).

In retrospective studies such as Hazan and Shaver (1987) it was found that adults who were secure in their romantic relationships were more likely to recall their childhood relationships with parents as being affectionate, caring, and accepting. But it is by no means the case that child-parent attachment styles and those of people enjoying a romantic relationship have a really strong connection. What is more likely is that some romantic relationships are genuine attachment relationships while others are not. It would seem that this is likely to provide an ongoing line of study for the future.

Appendix A - Bowlby's 44 Thieves study

Appendix B - Ainsworth's Strange Situation study

REFERENCES

Unattributed quotations within the body of this text will have been taken from Wikipedia articles.

Allen & Land Understanding and assessing trauma in children 1999

Seiffge-Krenke, 1993 Stress, coping and relationships in adolescence

Ainsworth, M. Patterns of Attachment, 1978.

Ainsworth M. Child Development, 1969

Bowlby, J. Attachment and Loss, 1969

H.R. Schaffer (Editor): Studies in Mother-Infant Interaction, 1977

Hazan, C. & Shaver, P. (1987) Romantic Love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

Judith Feeney and Patricia Noller, Adult Attachment, Sage, 1996

All other references may be checked via this excellent resource: http://www.simplypsychology.org/bowlby.html

We also recommend the two books on Attachment published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers and reviewed in the Book Review section of this issue of New Nurturing Potential: Attachment and Interaction by Mario Marrone, and Attachment, Trauma, and Healing by Terry M. Levy and Michael Orlans.