Attachment and Later Relationships
Attachment theory suggests that early experiences with caregivers shape an individual's later relationships. Secure attachment in infancy is linked to positive adult relationships, while insecure attachment can lead to difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships. These early attachment patterns influence an individual's ability to trust, communicate, and regulate emotions in future relationships.
7 Key excerpts on "Attachment and Later Relationships"
eBook - ePubDeveloping Attachment in Early Years Settings
Nurturing secure relationships from birth to five years
- Veronica Read(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Attachment research focuses on the importance of good enough early relationships, as one of the most important building blocks for good emotional well-being and mental health in later life. When I use the term attachment I mean the unique relationship between a child and his primary carer that consists of numerous moment to moment interactions which foster future healthy development. It is important too that secondary attachment carers develop close and lasting relationships with the absent primary carer in order to successfully meet a child’s needs during that absence. Bowlby defines attachment behaviour as ‘any form of behaviour that results in a person attaining or maintaining proximity to some other clearly defined individual who is conceived as better able to cope with the world’ (Bowlby 1988). Many of our early experiences may be beyond our control, for example: our genetic inheritance; the environment of the womb; when and where we were born; the social, economic and cultural circumstances of the family we are born into. However our genes shape our future, we are all from the moment of birth dependent on others for our survival and so ‘a gene cannot express itself, or have an influence, without its intimate partner – the environment’ (Berry Brazelton and Greenspan 2000, p. xvii). We know now, too, that this very early social environment shapes our emotional development and lays down a model for future relationships. The quality of preparation that goes into the fostering of long-term secondary caring and the commitment to authentic shared nurturing is within the control of a society committed to the protection of children. Making relationships outside the family Staff working in group childcare give a great deal of imaginative thought to the environments they create, by making them warm, inviting, exciting and interesting places to welcome children into...
- Daniel P. Keating, Hugh Rosen, Daniel P. Keating, Hugh Rosen(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Such an interest also relates to recent social changes in conditions of care that interest students of early development, such as the effects of maternal employment or day care on the mother–infant relationship. More importantly for the purposes of this volume, this emphasis on the formative influence of the mother–infant relationship has not only shaped theoretical views of normative personality development but also of developmental psychopathology, in which later socioemotional difficulties are linked to early problems in attachment relationships. For a long time, however, theoretical views concerning the formative influence of mother–infant attachment remained untested. It was not until the provocative theoretical work of Bowlby (1969), combined with Ainsworth's (1973, 1983) insightful conceptual and methodological contributions, that research on attachment began to flourish in the context of growing interest in developmental processes in infancy. Bowlby's theory of attachment reframed psychoanalytic propositions in terms of ethology and evolutionary biology, control-systems theory, and contemporary insights from cognitive developmental psychology. In Bowlby's view, early attachments are important not due just to their association with gratification, but as part of species survival. They are shaped by the quality of caregiver responsiveness to the baby's cues for proximity and aid (which are functionally adaptive only in the context of a responsive caregiving environment), and have a formative influence on personality functioning. In Bowlby's view, many adult personality disorders could be traced back to the early development of insecure attachments (Bowlby, 1973)...
eBook - ePubRethinking Attachment for Early Childhood Practice
Promoting security, autonomy and resilience in young children
- Sharne A Rolfe(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Part III Attachment relationships through infancy and early childhood 6 Infancy: Developing trust Emotional security—feeling safe and cared for—is something we all hope to experience as a normal, ongoing feature in our lives. But feeling secure is not the reality of every child and adult. Exposure to poverty, violence, war and/or famine poses serious threats to the safety of many people. Another form of insecurity has its roots within individuals and their interpersonal world. This is associated with a troubling and pervasive lack of trust in other people generally, and feelings of anxiety about the self. According to attachment theory, insecurity of this kind has its origins in difficulties experienced within the infant–caregiver relationship during the first year or so after birth. As Bowlby wrote in the second volume of his attachment trilogy:. . . just as we found that there is a strong case for believing that gnawing uncertainty about the accessibility and responsiveness of attachment figures is a principal condition for the development of unstable and anxious personality so is there a strong case for believing that an unthinking confidence in the unfailing accessibility and support of attachment figures is the bedrock on which stable and self-reliant personality is built (1973, p. 322). In this chapter, we explore the development of the attachment relationship, focusing in particular on the development of trust during the infancy period. In subsequent chapters in this section, attachment during the toddler, preschool and early school years are explored. Issues of importance to the early childhood professional during these stages of development are identified, including the growth of autonomy, and links between security of attachment and cognitive competence. Attachment formation The attachment relationship takes time to develop. From the infant's perspective, attachment is not present at birth. It emerges over time...
eBook - ePubChild and Adolescent Psychology for Social Work and Allied Professions
Applied Perspectives
- Gabriela Misca, Peter Unwin(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
...What these children have in common is that they have had their primary attachment bonds interrupted. It is therefore intuitive to make the link between these early experiences of separation and loss and their later adjustment. Recent government policy (Unwin & Misca, 2013) has promoted adoption as the preferred choice for children at risk as compared to previous practices and policies that have given parents several attempts at rehabilitation. The belief in the critical need for stable early attachment is a key underpinning theory behind this policy change. John Bowlby is the originator of attachment theory and its core tenet that the early attachment of infants to their caregiver is the outcome of an evolutionary mechanism designed not only to guarantee the survival of the dependent and vulnerable infant but also to provide enduring psychological connectedness between human beings (Bowlby, 1980). Attachment theory puts the emphasis on the role of early experiences in shaping the expectations and beliefs a child constructs concerning the trustworthiness and responsiveness of significant others. According to the theory, a person who is cared for in a consistent and responsive manner forms the expectation that others will be both available and supportive when needed (Ainsworth, 1979). Such expectations, or internal working models (IWMs), not only influence the way through which people regulate their emotions but also they can determine to a great extent an individual’s social development and interpersonal relationships in later life. In Bowlby’s view, these working models of relationships become slowly stable and unconscious over time...
eBook - ePubFrom Birth to Sixteen
Children's Health, Social, Emotional and Linguistic Development
- Helen Cowie(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 3 Attachment Map of the chapter This chapter charts the development of attachment relationships between children and their parents/caregivers, foster and adoptive parents and different family members, including siblings, grandparents and step-parents. It discusses the processes that lead to secure or insecure attachment, as well as the Strange Situation Test, and other measures of attachment. Links are made between theory of mind and the internal working model of relationships. Multiple attachments are considered, as well as cultural differences in the expression of attachment relationships. The chapter considers the impact on children of separation and loss, for example, through death or serious illness or extreme social conditions. The chapter also considers children who have been removed from their parents for reasons of abuse or severe neglect. The study of the English and Romanian adoptees is given as an example of the impact of institutional deprivation on children’s social-emotional development and mental health. The development of attachment Chapter 2 explored the development of the self and emphasized the critical role of the relationship between the growing child and the significant adults and peers in the child’s life. The present chapter continues to examine the impact of early family relationships on the development of the child’s inner world, sense of self and capacity to form meaningful bonds with others. Attachments can form at any age but the most intense study by psychologists has been that of the very first relationship that forms between baby and the primary caregiver usually, but not always, the mother. The focus here is on attachment theory, as initially proposed in detail by Bowlby (1969), grounded in his therapeutic work as a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Bowlby’s theory has been greatly extended and refined by his followers...
eBook - ePubAttachment Theory and Research
A Reader
- Tommie Forslund, Robbie Duschinsky, Tommie Forslund, Robbie Duschinsky(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...It seems useful at this juncture to extrapolate from attachment theory – and from infant–parent attachment, which has heretofore been the main focus of research – to a consideration of other affectional bonds about which there has been very little systematic investigation. Attachment of child to parent figures So far it has been established that attachments of a child to parent figures are first formed at some time in the second six months of life and that the qualitative nature of these attachments not only tends to be stable at least throughout the pre‐school years but also tends to have pervasive influence on what pathway development takes. There is every reason to believe, however, that attachments to parent figures become less centrally important to a child during the school years, penetrating fewer aspects of the child’s life than they did earlier. New relationships are formed, and eventually, during adolescence, the person seeks a heterosexual partner and, whether then or in early adulthood, is likely to find one with whom a new affectional bond can be established. Although for most this new bond may be expected to override child–parent attachments, it seems very unlikely to supplant them entirely. Systematic research is sadly lacking, however, in regard to the course of development of child–parent bonds beyond infancy, into early adulthood, and later. As the child’s activities come increasingly to have their focus outside the home, there is remarkably little information about changes in behavior that mediates continuing attachment to parents. It is usually assumed that the attachment to parents weakens, but there is little or no descriptive evidence either of the weakening or of the ways in which attachment continues to be manifested. Clinicians generally agree that the essential nature of the child’s emotional attitudes to the parents does not change even after the child has reached mature adulthood and has made a major emotional investment in a marital bond...
eBook - ePub- John Bowlby(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 The Role of Attachment in Personality Development DOI: 10.4324/9780203440841-7 Evidence regarding the role of attachment in personality development has been accumulating apace during the 1980s. Earlier findings have been replicated on samples of diverse origin; methods of observation have been refined and new methods introduced; and the role of easy two-way communication between parent and child in making for healthy emotional development has been emphasized. Since I believe this new work to have far-reaching clinical implications, my aim in this lecture has been to present a review of these findings in a form suited to those working as psychotherapists in the mental health field. For the convenience of the reader I begin by restating in summary form some of the features most distinctive of attachment theory. Some Distinctive Features of Attachment Theory It will be remembered that attachment theory was formulated to explain certain patterns of behaviour, characteristic not only of infants and young children but also adolescents and adults, that were formerly conceptualized in terms of dependency and over-dependency. In its original formulation observations of how young children respond when placed in a strange place with strange people, and the effects such experiences have on a child’s subsequent relations with his parents, were especially influential. In all subsequent work theory has continued to be tied closely to detailed observations and interview data of how individuals respond in particular situations. Historically the theory was developed out of the object-relations tradition in psychoanalysis; but it has drawn also on concepts from evolution theory, ethology, control theory, and cognitive psychology...
