Attachment Theory and Why We Connect to Others the Way We Do.

Bowlby, Ainsworth and attachment theory.

At the turn of the 20th century, psychologist Alfred Adler created Individual Psychology, which is based upon the premise that all problems were social problems.

In other words, a person’s personality could not be understood in isolation. Fifty years later, the psychologist John Bowlby and his research associate, Mary Ainsworth, would take this further to reveal how and why the roots of personality rose from the interpersonal bonds between an infant and their primary caretaker.

John Bowlby, known by many as the father of attachment theory, was born in London in 1907, the fourth of six children. Like many British upper-middle-class children, he and his siblings were raised by nannies.

Affection and deep connections between children and their parents was not outright discouraged, but nor was it… encouraged—the parenting gestalt at the time was mired in affectation, not affection.

To wit: Displaying emotions was tantamount to publicizing your weakness through a bullhorn (as though living through any pronounced emotional despair or anguish—and growing from it—isn’t the most heroic, super-human feat yet).

So the Bowlby children only saw their mother once a day, for around an hour, at tea time. And they saw their father once a week, on Sundays only.

The young Bowlby children received maternal love, only it came from hired help: nannies and nursemaids. Little John was especially close to his nanny, Minnie, whom he considered to be his alone.

His mother had a history of separating from her children for periods of time. In fact, just after giving birth to her first child, she left the baby with the nanny for six months to be with her new husband, who was living elsewhere.

The theme of separation impacted the lives of all the Bowlby children.

Three years later, when he was 7, John was sent away to boarding school. At the time, young John accepted this as normal, but he would later write in his book Separation: Anxiety and Anger:

“I wouldn't send a dog away to boarding school at age seven.”

John Bowlby studying a child

One can make the leap that these formative ruptures in maternal care are what sparked Bowlby’s interest in attachment.

In 1913, on the other side of the ocean in Glendale, Ohio, Mary Salter (later Ainsworth), the oldest of three girls, was born.

She would grow up to become a prominent Developmental Psychologist, who pioneered groundbreaking research on the theory of attachment, and she would also work with John Bowlby in the capacity of a research associate.

If John Bowlby is considered the father of attachment theory, then Mary Ainsworth must be considered its mother. For it was her contributions around which the entire theory pivoted.

When Mary was 5, her family moved to Toronto. Mary had a particularly close relationship with her father; her mother was much less nurturing and warm.

She was a uniquely precocious child who started reading at age 3. In high school, she came across a book called Character and the Conduct of Life by William McDougall, who wrote about the power a person has to change dissatisfying aspects of their inner life. This awakened something in Mary; having emotional control was a concept that hadn't ever occurred to her, and it opened up an entirely new field for her: psychology.

She ran toward it with open arms.

Looking back on her younger self, Mary was quoted as saying: “It had not previously occurred to me that one might look within oneself for some explanation of how one felt and behaved, rather than feeling entirely at the mercy of external forces. What a vista that opened up.”

When she enrolled at the University of Toronto as a 16-year-old, Mary had already decided to become a psychologist. Her focus was on assessing levels of security between infants and their primary caretakers.

As one of only five students, she was admitted to the challenging and intensive honors course in psychology. There was, she says, a “messianic spirit that permeated the department—a belief that the science of psychology was the touchstone for great improvements for the quality of life.”

While at the university, she met fellow psychology student Leonard Ainsworth, with whom she began a relationship and then married. Shortly after their nuptials, they moved to London in 1950.

Mary Ainsworth | JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado

Meanwhile in London, John Bowlby was working in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. He was profoundly affected by studying “maladjusted” children who suffered historically bad treatment in their early years, including one boy who grew up with no primary caregiver.

This catapulted his intensifying interest in the relationships between parents and their children. He decided to pursue the study of childhood psychology.

In 1946, he joined the Tavistock Clinic as the head of the children’s department and developed his clinical studies around the effects of separation between a mother and child.

By the late 1950s, his body of work showed that the way a human developed was unambiguously influenced by the type of attachment caregivers formed with the infants in their charge.

Of course, this led him to ask the fundamental question: how and why did attachment styles get passed down along generational lines, in the first place?

Evolution, he theorized. Survival instinct was used to protect newborns from becoming prey. How caretakers protected their newborns shaped expectations and behavior.

When the war ended, Bowlby created a dedicated unit at Tavistock to research and study behavioral responses in children separated from their parents. He hired Mary Ainsworth as his research associate.

If he hadn't, we might not realize that more than one attachment style exists. Perhaps we wouldn't have known as much about attachment theory as we do now.

He realized that children internalize the relationships they have with their primary caretakers. The expectation of care set by the primary caretaker becomes the framework upon which the baby bases all future interactions.

Original art for How to Live by Edwina White

If consistency and warmth is the primary model, the baby then expects consistency and warmth from everyone. What they are raised upon becomes the blueprint for how to be in a relationship with another person.

When the environment in which they are raised is not nurturing or responsive, then they do not become securely attached. When our physical, mental, and emotional needs are recognized, validated, and met, we feel supported and lovedare and learn how to do for ourselves what our nurturing caretaker/s did for us.

The reverse is also true.

All of our interactions and relationships throughout life, Bowlby and Ainsworth believed, is formed by our earliest attachments.

When our needs as infants aren’t met, we more often than not grow into people who have great difficulty building secure and stable bonds with others, mainly because we have a distorted perception of how relationships work.

We can feel forever stuck trying to get our unmet needs recognized and met by others.

The good news is that once we are made aware of why we feel stuck, we can work to change and grow.

Using Attachment Theory as a model, these early emotional bonds are vital, not simply because they cement the connections critical in attachment between infant and caretaker, but because they become the template upon which the child bases their emotions and relational style.

Ainsworth identified three distinct forms of attachment between mother and infant, which she categorized in her “Baltimore Study.” The styles are:

  1. “A” Insecure avoidant.

  2. “B” Secure.

  3. “C” Insecure ambivalent.

Ainsworth created the Baltimore Study to test her “sensitivity hypothesis.” The theory was based on her observation that there is a strong correlation between sensitive mothers and secure attachments and insensitive mothers and insecure attachments.

To test this theory, she designed The Strange Situation.

In this procedure, she could observe attachment relationships between caregivers and children and those same children with strangers by paying close attention to the responses.

Mary Ainsworth | Getty Images | JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado

Imagine a plain laboratory playroom.

A mother and her infant (between the ages of one year and 18 months old) play on the floor.

A stranger enters and makes herself comfortable. She talks to the mother and gets on the floor to play with the baby.

Not long after, the mother leaves and the baby is left alone with the stranger.

The stranger will try and calm the distressed child until the mother returns.

It’s the return, or the “reunion,” that Ainsworth was most interested in studying.

It’s during the reunion that the baby’s attachment pattern makes itself known.

The baby’s response to the caregiver’s style indicates the baby’s adaptation to the quality and care of their parent’s style.

If the baby is soothed by the mother, then the baby is demonstrating secure attachment.

After the return, the stranger leaves and then the mother leaves again, and the baby is now alone.

The stranger and the mother re-enter.

From this study, Ainsworth identified the following three attachment types: secure, avoidant, and ambivalent. A fourth style, disorganized/disoriented, was added by researchers to describe infants who had trouble dealing with stressful situations.

From the Strange Situation came the four working models of attachment styles we use today.

A word about these styles: Over the years these four styles have been re-described, renamed, and reintroduced by a multitude of names and it can get very confusing.

AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT: I am not judging or blaming any parenting style or any caretaker. I am simply relaying research. Please take any matter-of-fact statement with the spirit of research in which I am reporting and not the spirit of blame or judgment. Mothers and caretakers have a lot to deal with; they often suffer from post-partum, overwhelm, trauma...the list is endless. Okay, carry on....

I’ll try and break it down as simply as I can.

INSECURE ATTACHMENTS in childhood:

ANXIOUS-AMBIVALENT AS A BABY

Getty Images | Jade Brookbank

A baby can become ambivalently attached when their caretaker is inconsistent with their attention and love and when they miss important cues.

(Everyone will miss important cues. We are not battery-operated–and even batteries lose energy)

An inconsistent caretaker might be responsive one minute and absent the next.

This can leave a baby feeling confused about how to interact and what to expect from their caretaker. They want to be close but don’t know how.

Babies with anxious-ambivalent attachment styles can later have trouble building stable and secure bonds because they don’t know how to make sense of other people’s (or their own) inconsistent behavior.

A parent who is not attuned to their infant, or who uses their baby to satisfy their own needs rather than the needs of the baby, sends a confusing message that the parents' needs come first, and the baby's needs come second.

Mis-attunement in any relationship creates emotional distance.

ANXIOUS-PREOCCUPIED AS AN ADULT

Getty Images | Hulton Archive / Stringer

Anxious-ambivalent babies can often grow into anxious-preoccupied adults.

Anxiously-preoccupied adults can feel desperate for intimacy and closeness, but they, as they did as babies, struggle to let go of their fear in order to trust another person with their innermost fears and wishes.

AP adults often put their partners on a pedestal, elevating their importance. They can over-rely on their partners, which often has the unpleasant side effect of low self-esteem.

Being in a state of hypervigilant-attunement to someone else can do a number on a person's sense of self. Oftentimes, it leads people to question whether or not they are lovable.

The thing about styles is that they repeat. AP adults learn how to treat themselves based upon how their parents treated them.

If a parent puts their own needs before their baby's, a baby will internalize this lesson and believe that other people’s needs trump theirs.

They will grow up thinking that meeting other people’s expectations is more important than meeting their own. After all, when they put other people first, they feel validated.

A person with an ambivalent attachment style will often seek proof that they are loved. They might feel they need constant reassurance. Often, because they distrust others while also needing others, they will act out in ways that can backfire and alienate them.

ANXIOUS AVOIDANT AS A BABY

Getty Images | Harold M. Lambert / Contributor

When a parent is emotionally disengaged, unresponsive, and/or emotionally unavailable, the baby’s need for closeness is thwarted. If this behavior continues, the baby will learn to control their emotional displays.

If the primary caretaker is consistently disconnected due to mental health issues, addiction, or other reasons, the baby learns that the primary caretaker is not their source of care or comfort, and soon the baby will learn to stop turning to her caretaker for what she hasn’t received.

Babies with this attachment style will appear self-possessed and self-reliant at a young age. They are used to playing alone and are not bothered when their caretaker leaves.

Ainsworth found that avoidant babies reacted with detachment when reunited with their primary caretakers. This is often because caretakers of avoidant babies are insensitive to the needs of their infants during the first months of their life and don’t particularly like close physical contact.

Parents of avoidant kids are usually not very expressive or emotive, as they generally have a history of being rejected in their childhood. They are psychologically unavailable, which leads avoidant children to react with hostility or distance.

Avoidant babies don’t seek help with difficult tasks often because they are used to parents who offer minimal support.

AVOIDANT-DISMISSIVE AS AN ADULT

Getty Images | Alexsey Emelyanov / EyeEm

They struggle to express themselves openly, often shutting down in emotionally heightened conversations or circumstances.

Oftentimes, AD adults keep surface-level connections and don't dive deep with others. This type of engagement can feel like withholding. Their fierce independence can oftentimes find these folks living their lives entirely alone.

FEARFUL-AVOIDANT AS A BABY

Getty Images | LaylaBird

Fearful-avoidant attachment is created when a parent's style of attention is erratic: attentive one minute, and distant or angry the next.

Parents of fearful avoidant babies usually lack confidence in their own parenting abilities and oftentimes the infant’s needs can feel too overwhelming and scary. The overwhelm of these moments can often lead parents to feel fearful, which can leave them second guessing themselves and lead to unpredictable behavior.

They can react to their caretaker the same way their caretaker reacts to them: warm then cold, or avoid the caretaker but need them to remain close. These children have trouble with emotional regulation and can often be aggressive and oppositional.

DISORGANIZED AS AN ADULT

Getty Images | Bettmann / Contributor

People with this style can feel socially unstable, and this can manifest in awkward behavior.

The disorganized style of attachment can confuse everyone. It's a complex dance of wanting and fearing. They want and fear their partner. They want and fear their relationship, and yet, they struggle to trust others with their most intimate thoughts and feelings.

For adults with this style of attachment, the partner and the relationship themselves are often the source of both desire and fear. The struggle to self-regulate and to manage their emotions finds the disorganized type avoiding emotional attachments. The fear of getting hurt is just too strong.

SECURE ATTACHMENT in BABIES

Getty Images | Bettmann / Contributor

Secure attachment style signals comfort, and ease. Someone who can openly express themselves and talk about their emotions. The securely attached baby has a sense of stability. They trust themselves and they trust their caretaker.

The caretaker is a solid base from which the baby can come and go.

While they feel distressed when their caretaker leaves, they allow their caretaker to soothe and comfort when she returns.

These babies are able to bounce back quite easily from upsets. They embody confidence, feel self-reliance and possess a higher confidence than less securely attached infants.

Mothers of these securely attached infants are consistent and quick to respond. They are highly attuned and responsive.

From Bowlby himself...

SECURE ATTACHMENT IN ADULTS

Securely attached adults don't struggle to trust and rely upon their partners; nor do they struggle to be relied upon.

These relationships are based on a shared sense of closeness, reliability and care.

A securely attached adult loves time with their partner, and they also love time on their own. They don't fear or depend on their partner for their own emotional security. They trust that they will both be fine.

The good news is, no matter what your style of attachment, you can work on changing it. But first, you have to understand it. Caretakers can also change their style of parenting by understanding their own attachment style.

A less vintage explanation of Ainsworth's "Strange Situation."

And you? Do you know your attachment style? If you have a child, can you identify your parenting style and their attachment style?

Until next week I remain…

Amanda

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