Parent-Infant Attachment

Attachment, which refers to the bidirectional bond that is formed between children and their caregivers, is a process that begins in utero and continues throughout the first year of life and beyond. John Bowlby introduced attachment theory in the 1950s, describing secure attachment as requiring an available and responsive caregiver to promote normal cognitive and emotional development in the child. Although Bowlby focused on the mother, we now recognize attachment between father and child to be significant too. These concepts were further studied by Bowlby’s student, Mary Ainsworth, in the 1970s through the Strange Situation experiments. In these experiments, children were repeatedly separated for brief times and then reunited with their mothers while the children’s reactions were recorded. Ainsworth initially found that there were 3 main types of attachment between children and their mothers: secure, avoidant, and ambivalent. A fourth type, disorganized attachment, was classified later. Children with secure attachment use their parents as a secure base from which to explore their environment. They seek out their caregivers fo