John Bowlby/Archive 1 - Bowlby's Legacy

Bowlby's Legacy

Although not without its critics, attachment theory has been described as the dominant approach to understanding early social development and to have given rise to a great surge of empirical research into the formation of children's close relationships. As it is presently formulated and used for research purposes, Bowlby's attachment theory stresses the following important tenets:

1. Children between 6 and about 30 months are very likely to form emotional attachments to familiar caregivers, especially if the adults are sensitive and responsive to child communications.
2. The emotional attachments of young children are shown behaviourally in their preferences for particular familiar people, their tendency to seek proximity to those people, especially in times of distress, and their ability to use the familiar adults as a secure base from which to explore the environment.
3. The formation of emotional attachments contributes to the foundation of later emotional and personality development, and the type of behaviour toward familiar adults shown by toddlers has some continuity with the social behaviours they will show later in life.
4. Events that interfere with attachment, such as abrupt separation of the toddler from familiar people or the significant inability of carers to be sensitive, responsive or consistent in their interactions, have short-term and possible long-term negative impacts on the child's emotional and cognitive life.