Attachment Parenting - History

History

Attachment theory, originally proposed by John Bowlby, states that the infant has a tendency to seek closeness to another person and feel secure when that person is present. Bowlby had earlier proposed in his maternal deprivation hypothesis published in 1951 that maternal deprivation would not only cause depression in children, but also acute conflict and hostility, decreasing their ability to form healthy relationships in adult life.

Sigmund Freud proposed that attachment was a consequence of the need to satisfy various drives. According to attachment theory, children attach to parents because they are social beings for whom such relationship is natural and intrinsic, not only because they need other people to satisfy drives.

In the 1970s James Prescott carried out research into primate child-mother bonding and noted a clear link between disruption of the child-mother bonding process and the emergence of violence and fear-based behaviour in the young primates. Unable to conduct the same research on human subjects, he then carried out a number of cross cultural studies of all known first contact observations of Aboriginal Societies. He found he could accurately predict the emergence of violence and hierarchical power in any given society, based on the treatment of mothers and children.

Developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth devised a procedure, called The Strange Situation, to observe attachment relationships between a human caregiver and child. She observed disruptions to the parent/child attachment over a 20 minute period, and noted that this affected the child's exploration and behavior toward the mother. This operationalization of attachment has recently come under question, as it may not be a valid measure for infants that do not experience distress upon initial encounter with a stranger.

According to Attachment Parenting International (API) there are 8 principles that foster healthy (secure) attachment between the caretaker and infant. While none of these principles is derived directly from original attachment research, they are presented as parenting practices that can lead to "attunement", "consistent and sensitive responsiveness" and "physical and emotional availability" that research has found to be key factors in secure attachment.