What is the Role of Attachment?

Buy this book »

One of the most important items that any child carries with him is his relationship with his primary caregiver. This person is usually his mother but may also be his father, grandmother, or someone else entirely. This very first relationship is the basis for his relationship with you.

What we know about early relationships really began with John Bowlby, whose ideas are so much a part of our thinking today that it’s hard to imagine how revolutionary they seemed just 50 years ago. While studying children who had been separated from their parents at a young age, the British psychoanalyst came to believe that a baby’s relationship with his closest caregivers plays a key role in development. Infants are emotional beings who naturally form strong bonds with their parents, Bowlby recognized, and the way those special adults interact with their baby wields a powerful influence on how he turns out (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1969/1982).

Bowlby (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1969/1982) realized that human infants, like other animal species, are born with instinctive behaviors that help them to survive. Acts such as crying, smiling, vocalizing, grasping, and clinging keep babies close to their primary caregivers, who protect them from predators, feed and soothe them, and teach them about their environment. These attachment behaviors, as Bowlby (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1969/1982) called them, help to create attachment—children’s vital emotional tie to their primary caregiver or attachment figure. Nature equips attachment figures with their own innate and complementary behaviors—soothing, calling, restraining, for instance—that also serve to keep babies safe and cement the bond between mother and child (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

In pioneering studies in the 1950s and 1960s, American psychologist Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth et al., 1978) confirmed Bowlby’s theory by documenting for the first time the emotional impact of parents’ everyday behavior on their children. In Uganda and then in Baltimore, Ainsworth meticulously observed mothers and babies at home over the first year of life. She watched the process of attachment unfold as the babies came to recognize, prefer, seek out, and become attached to their primary caregiver.

These observations enabled Ainsworth to make a critical discovery: A baby’s sense of security depends on how his attachment figure cares for him. During the first year of life an infant evolves an attachment strategy—a way to organize feelings and behavior—that is tailor-made for coping with his own unique caregiving situation. The strategy he develops is the one that will deal best with his particular stressful circumstances and negative emotions and bring him the most security and comfort possible (van IJzendoorn, Schuengel, and Bakermans-Kranenburg, 1999; Weinfeld et al., 1999). All attachment strategies are normal, adaptive, and functional; the trouble is that what works best within the child’s family may not work outside it (Greenberg, DeKlyen, Speltz, and Endriga, 1997).