Attachment Theory: Understanding The Parent and Child Relationship
Attachment: The Foundation of All Relationships.
Currently, there is a lot of concern expressed about children’s preoccupation with ‘screens’, their lack of fresh air and exercise, and the absence of face to face time for socializing, entertainment, and problem solving. We should be just as concerned about parents, grandparents, and daycare providers’ use of screens, and how these directly affect children’s learning and behaviour.
Attachment theory is getting a lot of consideration today because it speaks to our deep fears that we are not paying enough attention to our infants and children, and the message is that we are right to be concerned. Children need caring adults to hold, watch, and interact with them on a daily basis, in order for them to learn how to develop healthy, enjoyable relationships.
Attachment Theory
More than fifty years ago, John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, developed a theory of attachment which posited that children are hard wired to attach to their caregivers for security and survival; that this instinct developed through evolution to increase caregiving responses, and enhance survival. The fact that all infants suck, cry, cling, smile, and follow eye gaze is proof of their inborn propensity to keep their mothers close. Theorists before Bowlby, asserted that caregivers were interchangeable, as they believed that children merely needed to be changed and fed; Bowlby argued that the infant/caregiver relationship is primary, and involves much more than feeding and providing physical comfort.
In Bowlby’s formulation, most of a child’s behaviour could be understood from an attachment perspective; emotional security is based on a child’s confidence that the caregiver will be available if required, anxiety stems from anxiety about separation from the caregiver, and anger is a protest against separation. He asserted that, through thousands of interactions with their caregivers, infants develop “internal working models” of relationships which reflect their experience and form their expectations for future relationships. Bowlby asserted that children either attached to their caregivers, or failed to attach. Later researchers showed that almost all children attach to their caregivers but they do so in different ways, with different behaviours, depending on their caregivers’ ability to attend, engage, and respond reliably, by reading their infant’s signals.
Attachment Styles/Patterns
Mary Ainsworth, a Canadian/American developmental psychologist, demonstrated through her research, that children develop attachment “styles” and these attachment “styles” become a template for all our intimate relationships. Subsequent research has confirmed that attachment styles are developed in the first two years of life, powerfully affect a child’s confidence, selfesteem, and quality of intimate relationships, and that these attachment styles are resistant to change.
1. Secure Attachment: Secure children look to their parents for comfort when distressed or fearful, or to interpret novel situations, are easily soothed, are curious about people and their environment, and are happy to be reunited with their parents after an absence. To achieve this outcome, parents need to be attuned to their baby’s needs in the first year of life (good enough, not perfect). 65%-70% of children are in this category.
2. Anxious/Resistant Attachment: Anxious/resistant children are whiny and clingy, easily disrupted and difficult to soothe, distressed when their parents leave but continue to be distressed when their parents return. The parents are likely inconsistent and/or intrusive (when parents are preoccupied with their own difficulties, it intrudes on the child’s state); children are anxious, insecure, and hesitant. 10-15% of children are in this category.
3. Anxious/Avoidant Attachment: Anxious/avoidant children are dismissive of their need for their caregiver, rarely look for soothing, rarely reference caregivers, show little distress in their parents’ absence, and ignore parents upon reunion. The parents probably didn’t pick up on their baby’s signals in the first year, and/or misread signals. These children tend to be controlling and rigid. 10-15% of children are estimated to be in this category.
4. Disorganized Attachment: When children are stressed, they naturally move toward their caregivers for safety but when children are frightened by their caregivers, they are impelled by the fight/flight/shut down system to move away from, or fight the caregiver. Children with disorganized attachment have no coherent response when stressed and will approach their caregivers and then withdraw, turn in circles, collapse, or bite their own hand. They are terrified of their caregivers who were abusive, or out of control. This is a dilemma without a solution; the caregiver, who is intended to be there for soothing and protection, is the source of the terror. These children have cognitive difficulties, especially in problem solving and they grow into lots of other problems; these children have a tendency to dissociate, which means they have difficulty processing and integrating frightening or threatening experiences. Disorganized attachment may be a risk factor for developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 5-10% of children are thought to be in this category.
NOTE: It is important to note that children with anxious attachment styles are not less attached to their parents; they are attached in an anxious way. This is often misunderstood, and can be particularly problematic in a child welfare context, when it is sometimes asserted that children who are anxiously attached, won’t be traumatized by being removed from their mothers’ care.
Adult Attachment Inventory
In 1982, Mary Mains (an American developmental psychologist, and student of Mary Ainsworth), developed the Adult Attachment Inventory to explore the relationship between parents’ attachment styles and those of their infants. She found an astounding correlation between parents and their children and was able to predict with 80% accuracy the attachment styles of unborn infants, based on her interviews with parents.
Importantly, she also found a mediating factor. Parents with anxious attachment styles could have securely attached infants, if they understood that they had self esteem and relationship challenges and why; if they had a “coherent narrative” about what happened to them, who their parents were, and what they would need to do differently. For example, a woman who was neglected by her alcoholic mother could provide adequate nurturance to her child, if she is aware that she was neglected and that she suffered from loneliness and deprivation; knowing that, allows her to realize that her own child would need more, and better attention. If, on the other hand, she dismissed the effect of her mother’s alcoholism on her emotional development, she would be far less cognizant of her child’s needs for closeness and support.
Results of the Adult Attachment Inventory:
Parents who are securely attached have securely attached children.
Parents who are preoccupied with negative events in childhood
and/or very anxious, have children with anxious/ambivalent/resistant attachment.
Parents who are dismissive of their own needs for comfort and soothing, have children with an anxious avoidant attachment style.
Parents who are disorganized, have children with disorganized attachment.
Recent Developments in Attachment Research
Peter Fonagy is a British psychologist, now Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre in London. His work has extended the theory of attachment, beyond the realm of emotional security. He proposes that attachment is not only a requirement for safety, but is necessary for the development of social intelligence. The foundation for what children need to know about relationships is learned in the early face to face interactions with their caregivers. Infants and children who are calm and interacting pleasurably with interested adults, are able to be curious, not only about their environments but about their minds, their intentions, their emotional states…and those of others. They are able to reflect, observe, hypothesize, distinguish inner from outer reality, and enjoy interpersonal events, without controlling them. There is simply no substitute for eye contact.
Conclusion
In our desire to give our kids everything we think they need, we may be missing the easiest, cheapest, most pleasurable parts of living–listening, watching, touching, exploring. Another reason to unplug?
Resources
1. J. Bowlby, Attachment and Loss: Volume 1, Attachment, Basic Books, New York, 1969.
2. M.D.S Ainsworth, M.C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, “Patterns of attachment: a psychological study of the strange situation,” Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J., 1978.
3. Mary Main, “The organized categories of infant, child, and adult attachment,” Journal of the Psychoanalytic Association, 48, 1055-1096, 2000.
4. P. Fonagy, G. Gergely, E. Jurist, and M. Target, Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self, New York, Other Press, 2002.
About The Author
Janet Morrison, M.A., C. Psych Assoc. is a psychological associate in private practice and a senior lecturer at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto. Over the past 30 years she has assessed, treated and supervised treatment of children in long-term care, as well as, consulted for Children's Aid Society and group homes across Ontario.