By: Wanjohi. P. Mugambi
Worth Noting:
- Attachment research and other directions in the study of parenting have common concerns with the effects of parenting on children’s development over time. Attachment is posited to be a function of the experiential histories between parents and children.
- Research has been especially concerned with the implications for attachment security of the emotional availability and accessibility of parents to their children. Moreover, if continuity of attachment is normally expected, the security of attachment is hypothesized to be subject to change if parenting or ecological contexts of parenting alter substantially over time to challenge the children’s existing sense of emotional security.
- For example, if martial dissolution or dramatic reductions in socioeconomic status significantly reduce the emotional availability or accessibility of parents to their children, attachments may change from secure to insecure.
Attachment is a particular conceptualization of the influence of parents on their children’s development in the context of parent–child relationships. Attachment refers to an affective bond between parents and children. The notion is that children form affective bonds with parents that have continuity over time, and that parents form reciprocal relationships with their children. Moreover, relations between attachment and children’s and adults’ functioning have been repeatedly reported. It follows that attachment is seminal to the study of parenting. Relatedly, a practical question of some importance for many parents has become: How can we grow a securely attached child?
The theory posits that close relationships between individuals, in particular between parents and their children, are about more than transient variations in interaction patterns over time. That is, attachments have a substance and continuity that transcend the specifics of day-to-day interactions. Moreover, attachments are held to be formed in Western cultures except under the most unfortunate circumstances of early environment, like the extreme lack of parental care that characterizes conditions of “maternal deprivation”
Thus, it is expected that the great majority of children living in normal circumstances of Western cultures form attachments to the parents. Accordingly, research on attachment as an investigation into parenting has been primarily concerned with qualitative aspects of interactions between parents and their children rather than with whether or not children form attachments. With regard to qualities of attachment, the security of attachment has been the particular focus of theory and research.
Thus, attachment is a particular perspective on parenting: a relational perspective on affective ties between children and their parents and the implications of these relationships for a child’s development. Moreover, attachments are posited to be pertinent to an individual’s functioning across the lifespan. For example, while the focus of research was initially on infant–parent attachments, evidence has now accumulated for the significance of attachment to parents for older children , adolescents, and adults. Moreover, attachments typify other close relationships, including romantic and marital relationships, with implications for the individual’s functioning. Furthermore, although much thoughtful discussion has been published with regard to the limitations of attachment research , support for this perspective on close relationships is impressive, including frequent publication and citation in selective and prestigious journals. Accordingly, a researcher commented, “Attachment theory has become the dominant approach to understanding early socioemotional and personality development during the past quarter century of research.”
Attachment research and other directions in the study of parenting have common concerns with the effects of parenting on children’s development over time. Attachment is posited to be a function of the experiential histories between parents and children. Research has been especially concerned with the implications for attachment security of the emotional availability and accessibility of parents to their children. Moreover, if continuity of attachment is normally expected, the security of attachment is hypothesized to be subject to change if parenting or ecological contexts of parenting alter substantially over time to challenge the children’s existing sense of emotional security. For example, if martial dissolution or dramatic reductions in socioeconomic status significantly reduce the emotional availability or accessibility of parents to their children, attachments may change from secure to insecure. Thus, findings of continuity or “lawful discontinuity,” that is, changes in attachment status that predictably follow from changes in children’s experiences, are both consistent with attachment theory.
The present chapter begins by examining the history of the notion that an affective bond forms between infants and parents that has implications for children’s development. After outlining central issues for the study of attachment as parenting, assumptions and principles of attachment theory are reviewed. Next, selected themes in classical and modern research on attachment and parenting are examined, including:
(1) parenting and attachment
(2) cross-cultural perspectives on attachment,
(3) fathers and attachment
(4) attachment from a family-wide perspective
(5) processes mediating the effects of attachment
(6) pathways of development.
Finally, we conclude by considering future directions and offering take-home messages for the parents that serves as a foundation for the “field”. Attachment refers to an affective tie between parent and child, not, by definition, to any specific parenting behaviors, practices, or styles (Ainsworth, 1969; Sroufe and Waters, 1977). Moreover, attachment is a relational construct, so that one must appreciate the mutual interaction of child and parent in particular contexts in order to evaluate attachment security. For example, a child with an emotionally warm parent will not necessarily be securely attached, especially if the parent’s expressions of warmth are intrusive or insensitive to children’s signals, for example, kissing a child that does not want to be kissed. Parental warmth does not constitute a secure attachment. Nonetheless, parental warmth may increase the probability of the occurrence of secure attachment if it increases the child’s confidence in the availability of the parent as a secure base. The conceptualization of attachment as a relational construct pertinent to parenting thus merits particular attention. Although attachment, by definition, is not a parenting style or practice, classical and modern directions in attachment research are fundamentally about parenting.
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