Does the attachment theory provide a sound basis for advice on how to bring up children? To answer this question for advice to parents I will explore some of the details of the attachment theory showing, 1) earlier studies and more up to date criticisms, 2) how it proposes family members and day care can affect a child’s upbringing.
Attachment is the bond that develops between caregiver and infant when it is about eight or nine months old, providing the child with emotional security. Meshing commences from when the child is being fed, onto taking part in pseudo-dialogue and then following on to the child taking part in a more active role of proto dialogue, illustrated by Kaye (1982), other concepts such as scaffolding and inter-subjectivity have also been explored by psychologists. As the infant grows older the attention escalates towards the direction of the caregiver.
John Bowlby(1958, 1969, 1973, 1980) pioneer of the attachment theory was involved in research regarding the emotional connection between the adult and infant and he believed that the early relationships determined the behaviour and emotional development of a child. In an early Bowlby (1944) study he discovered children who had an unsettling upbringing where more likely to become juvenile delinquents. His work is constantly open to criticism and has been revisited with further research. Subsequent research has based measuring security and insecurity in a child from an early age using the Strange Situation Test. Other research has shown certain trends of difficult behaviour and how the child interacts with the caregiver actively.
Bowlby’s theory was based on ideas from ethology and previous work, psychodynamic theory by Sigmund Freud, it was appropriate for the 1950’s after the 2nd World War when women were returning to household duties and motherhood as men returned to their employment after the war. He believed that a child should have interaction with one caregiver ‘monotropism’ and that separation from this person would trigger the ‘proximity promoting behaviours’ in the attachment structure.
The caregiver arriving would cause the behaviours of, clinging, making noises and crying to discontinue. The protected foundations of the affectionate bonds occurring between parent and infant representation becomes part of the internal working model. Those become the foundations and the heart of all close relationships during the continuing life of the child through to adulthood. The disruption of the relationship between mother and child through parting, lack of emotion and bereavement to the bonding process.
Bowlby’s maternal deprivation theory (1951,1953)was enthused by the Konrad Lorenz’s(1966 ) imprinting study on young animals. He believed that like imprininting one permanent figure should be the caregiver and children deprived of those maternal links could be disastrous to the child’s mental health and could lead



to delinquency. His views on long term institutional care were that if a child was fostered before the age of 2yrs and six months it may not be delayed in emotional, social and cognitive development but some of his studies show that there have been various forms of parting in youths with severe behavioural problems
Attachment behaviour according to Mary Ainsworth (1985; Ainsworth and Bell, 1974; Ainsworth et al., 1978) forms the groundings for all potential associations and this develops up to two years after the child is born. She also harmonized with Bowlby on the view that the attachment bonding occurred within the age of two years old. Approximately when the child is seven months old they become wary of strangers and unknown surroundings. This continue until the child is about two years old. The procedure Ainsworth (1969) investigated to measure if a child was securely or insecurely attached was the ‘strange situation paradigm’. This entailed a sequence of short partings and reunions. The child’s parent and a stranger took part in the study with a one year old child, there were eight sequences in all and Ainsworth’s measurement on secure and insecure attachment was based on the reunion episode of how the child reacted in this situation.This was judged using four different variables. It was found that there were three diverse distinct patterns of adjustment. Type A: anxious/ avoidant, type B: secure and type C: anxious/ ambivalent. Most of the children displayed secure attachment, one fifth of the sample showed type A and one tenth showed type C. Main and Solomon (1990) have introduced a further pattern type D: disorganized in a more recent study to relate to behaviour for a child in a high risk environment. The ‘strange situation paradigm’, has been critized by Judy Dunn (1982, 1983), as she believes that children from different backgrounds, e.g. institutional care and living with their own families may apply different meanings to the test and environment of the child. The technique and the results of the experiment also are doubted by her. Another study by Richman (1982) et al has shown that various risk factors of disturbed behaviour can be determined from when a child is 3 years old. Some of the factors that can influence a child’s emotional development are a mother’s mental state, marital relationships and the attitudes of the parents towards the child. The active role of the child must also be taken into consideration when assessing advice on how to bring up children as displayed in the transactional model, Sameroff (1991), as the child is interacting with their surroundings, while the caregiver is developing the child’s behaviour and future relationships.
The view of Ainsworth and Bowlby both agreeing that attachment is universal could be argued as different cultures have varying degrees of how long a child should be left alone, as the Japanese, Israeli and Chinese results show for type C, in the cross-cultural study by Marinus van Ijzendoorn and Peter Kroonenberg (1988). There also could be possible problems with the ethological view of comparing children to young animals as they could be driven by a food instinct. Bowlby only considered the effect of the child by the caregiver; other variables could be brought into affect such as the infant’s temperament. A mother who gives birth to a child with a thorny temperament could opt to go to work and leave the child in day care; this could also have the opposite affect on the mother not being able to leave the child with any
others. The toleration of the mother and the view of the goodness of fit, Chess and Thomas (1984) could have an impact on behaviour and a reflection on the attachment bonding of the mother and child. Bowbly and Ainsworth were also united in the development of secure attachment depending on the sensitive mothering of the child in the first year but this could also have an impact on the mother as Woollett and Pheonix (1991) argue, if she has to give up all her previous engagements and work possibly causing depression. A possible alternative to this could be to share the responsibility of parenthood but this would be in contrast to Bowlby and Ainsworth’s view.
The observation of a film called ‘A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital’, James Robertson (1952), brought to the forefront the distress and discomfort of a child being separated from her mother in hospital during a long term stay. At this period in time mothers were not encouraged to visit their children in hospital frequently. The separation of the child according to Ainsworth and Bowlby could have greatly affected its emotional wellbeing and the bonding of the attachment process. Separation and the child being looked after by alternative means have also been studied in more recent research. Day care was one subject approached by Bowlby and he believed that if a child went to nursery before three year old it would also lead to irretrievable damage. More recent studies conducted during the 1970’s and 80’s show contrasting views and this was confirmed in a study by Jan Belsky and Laurence Steinberg (1978) and also Clarke-Stewart and Fein (1983). A later study by Belsky (1988), had different findings as mothers who worked more than 20 hours a week showed an increasing level of insecure attachment compared to his previous study that rated no problems with day care, Clarke-Stewart would dispute this data. Some of the other factors that needed to be taken into account according to Belsky were the variations of the surroundings, staff, children and quality of day care.
Bowlby’ s maternal deprivation approach has been greatly critized as nowadays it is not unknown for other members of the family to loo after the child successfully. The grandparents if living close by may be a constant form of childminder as they are continuous figures and this was demonstrated in Judy Dunn and Kendrick’s Cambridge study. On a wider context the role they determine is dependant on a number of factors, age, fitness and where they live. It can also help to improve family finances enabling the mother to go to work. Although fathers do not generally have a leading role in child rearing Lamb(1981), this could be seen as the male and female differences in our cultures. The relationship changes over time between the father and infant, when the child is a baby he reacts in similar ways to a baby but becomes more playful as the child ages.
The reaction to a sibling in a family could be different comparing cultures and Dunn and Kendrick’s study show how the birth of a second child can influence the behaviour and emotions of the older child. Attachment may not be immediate for the children and this can be measured using the ‘strange situation test’. Research using this method by Stewart (1983) agreed with Dunn and Kendrick showing this attachment could take time to develop.
So does the attachment theory provide a sound basis for advice on how to bring up children? The early attachment theory is still recognised but it


has been advanced and explored further, the maternal deprivation theory has become old fashioned and this has been replaced by showing that children can develop securely with more than one caregiver. Family members can also
act as a caregiver supplying a secure base for future relationships. As more recent research has shown that there are certain risk factors that can extinguish difficult behaviours and some of these can be determined from when the child is three years old, but Sameroff shows that it is not just the caregiver that should be looked upon for the child’s upbringing as the child plays an active role in their environment. The attachment theory and the up to date research could give some advice to parents in how they rear their child as a working mum may be worried on the effects of a child going to grandparents, day care or may be looked after by siblings or their fathers. From Dunn’s research it could also help to show parents not to worry that the bonding of siblings if not immediate this may not have lasting consequences. The question of day care would be advisable by Clarke-Stewart but Belsky would not advise the mother to work more than 20 hours a week in the child’s first week of life. Grandparents depending on the distance involved would be classed as an alternative option and a secure basis for child rearing. So from looking at the attachment theory advising a parent on how to bring up their child the risk factors would also need to be taken into consideration. The earliest attachment research by Bowlby on juvenile delinquents could be compared to the study by Richman in showing how risk factors can provoke such behaviour and not just the mother’s influence could produce problems.
The problem with the studies involved are that there are always criticism or alternative views, so depending on which psychologists child rearing is based on it would be up to the parent to decide. Statistics are always challenged and the samples of participants are always up to dispute. Future research may lead to a common approach or agreement on how children can be brought up but in most cases it is up to the parent. If there are no parents involved then it is up to child care. Hopefully we have learned from the distressing scenes of the two year old and her stay in hospital as parents are now allowed to stay with their children and not have limited visits.





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