Mary Ainsworth - Early Work

Early Work

While in England, Ainsworth joined the research team at Tavistock Clinic investigating the effects of maternal separation on child development. Comparison of disrupted mother-child bonds to normal mother-child relationship showed that a child's lack of a mother figure leads to "adverse development effects." In 1954, she left Tavistock Clinic to do research in Africa, where she carried out her longitudinal field study of mother-infant interaction.

Ainsworth's book from that field study, Infancy in Uganda (1967) remains an exceptional and classic ethological study in the development of Attachment, and demonstrates that the process reflects specific universal characteristics that cross linguistic, cultural and geographic lines.

She and her colleagues developed the Strange Situation Procedure, which is a widely used, well researched and validated, method of assessing an infant's pattern and style of attachment to a caregiver. (See Attachment theory.)