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Perhaps you remember being intensely in love. You may be in that wonderful state right now. You cannot stop fantasizing about your significant other. Your moves blend with your partner’s. You connect in a unique way. Knowing that this person is there gives you confidence. You can conquer the world. You feel uncomfortable when you are separated. Your world depends on having your lover close. Now you know how Elissa feels about her mother and the powerful emotions that flow from Kim to her child.

During much of the twentieth century, U.S. psychologists seemed indifferent to these feelings. At a time when psychology was dominated by behaviorism, studying love seemed unscientific. Behaviorists minimized our need for attachment, suggesting that babies wanted to be close to their mothers because this “maternal reinforcing stimulus” provided food. Worse yet, one famous early behaviorist named John Watson seemed hostile to attachment when he crusaded against the dangers of “too much” mother love:

When I hear a mother say “bless its little heart” when it falls down, I . . . have to walk a block or two to let off steam. . . . Can’t she train herself to substitute a kindly word . . . for . . . the coddling? . . . Can’t she learn to keep away from the child a large part of the day? [And then he made this memorable statement:] . . . I sometimes wish that we could live in a community of homes [where] . . . we could have the babies fed and bathed each week by a different nurse. (!)

(Watson, 1928/1972, pp. 82–83)

European psychoanalysts felt differently. They discovered that attachment was far from dangerous. It was crucial to infant life.

Consider a heart-rending mid-twentieth-century film that showed the fate of babies living in orphanages (Blum, 2002; Karen, 1998). In these sterile, impeccably maintained institutions, behaviorists would have predicted that infants should thrive. So why did babies lie listless on cots—unable to eat, withering away?

Now consider that ethologists—the forerunners of today’s evolutionary psychologists—noticed that every species had a biologically programmed attachment response (or drive to be physically close to their mothers) that appeared at a specific point soon after birth. When the famous ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1935) arranged to become this attachment-eliciting stimulus for goslings, as this compelling photograph shows, Lorenz became the adored Pied Piper the baby geese tried to follow to the ends of the earth.

However, it took a rebellious psychologist named Harry Harlow, who studied monkeys, to convince U.S. psychologists that the behaviorist meal-dispenser model of mother love was wrong. In a classic study, Harlow (1958) separated baby monkeys from their mothers at birth and raised them in a cage with a wire-mesh “mother” (which offered food from a milk bottle attached to its chest) and a cloth “mother” (which was soft and provided contact comfort). The babies stayed glued to the cloth mother, making occasional trips to eat from the wire mom. In stressful situations, they scurried to the cloth mother for comfort. Love won, hands down, over getting fed!

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Moreover, there were serious psychological consequences for the monkeys raised without their moms. The animals couldn’t have sex. They were frightened of their peers. After being artificially inseminated and giving birth, the “motherless mothers” were uncaring, abusive parents. One mauled her baby so badly that it later died (Harlow and others, 1966; Harlow, C. M., 1986).

Then, in the late 1960s, John Bowlby put the evidence together—the orphanage findings, Lorenz’s ethological studies, Harlow’s research, his own clinical work with children who had been hospitalized or separated from their mothers (Hinde, 2005). In a landmark series of books, Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) argued that there is no such thing as “excessive mother love.” Having a loving primary attachment figure is crucial to our development. It is essential to living fully at any age. By the final decades of the twentieth century, attachment moved to the front burner in developmental science. It remains front and center today.

Bowlby (1969, 1973) made his case for the crucial importance of attachment based on evolutionary theory. He believed that, as with other species, human beings have a critical period when the attachment response “comes out.” As with Lorenz’s ducks, attachment is built into our genetic code to allow us to survive. Although the attachment response is programmed to emerge during our first years of life, proximity-seeking behavior—our need to make contact with an attachment figure—is activated when our survival is threatened at any age.

Bowlby believed that threats to survival come in two categories. They may be activated by our internal state. When a child clings only to her mom, you know she must be tired. When you go to the hospital, you make sure that your family is close. You immediately text your “significant other” when you have a fever or the flu.

They may be evoked by dangers in the external world. During childhood, it’s a huge dog that causes us to run anxiously into our parent’s arms. As adults, it’s a professor’s nasty comment or a humiliating experience at work that provokes a frantic call to our primary attachment figure, be it our spouse, our father, or our best friend.

Although we all need to touch base with our significant others when we feel threatened, adults and older children can be separated from their attachment figures for some time. During infancy and early childhood, simply being physically apart causes distress. Now, let’s trace step-by-step how human attachment unfolds.

Attachment Milestones

According to Bowlby, during their first three months of life, babies are in the preattachment phase. Remember that during this reflex-dominated time infants have yet to wake up to the world. However, at around 2 months there is a milestone called the social smile. Bowlby believed that this first real smile does not show attachment to a person. Because it pops up in response to any human face, it is just one example of an automatic reflex such as sucking or grasping that evokes care from adults.

Still, a baby’s eagerly awaited first smile can be an incredible experience if you are a parent. Suddenly, your relationship with your child shifts to a different plane. Now, I have a confession to make: During my first 2 months as a new mother, I was worried, as I did not feel anything for this beautiful child I had waited so long to adopt. I date Thomas’s first endearing smile as the defining event in my lifelong attachment romance.

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At roughly 4 months of age, infants enter a transitional period, called attachment in the making. At this time, Piaget’s environment-focused secondary circular reactions are unfolding (recall Chapter 3). The cortex is coming on-line. Babies may show a slight preference for their primary caregiver. But still, a 4- or 5-month-old can be the ultimate party person, thrilled to be cuddled by anyone—from Grandma, to a neighbor, to a stranger at the mall.

By around 7 or 8 months of age, this changes. At this age, as you saw in Chapter 3, babies are hunting for hidden objects—showing that they have the cognitive skills to miss their caregivers. Now that they can crawl, or walk holding onto furniture, children can really get hurt. The stage is set for clear-cut (or focused) attachment—the beginning of the full-blown attachment response. This phase of intense attachment will last throughout the toddler years.

Separation anxiety signals this milestone. When your baby is about 7 or 8 months old, she suddenly gets uncomfortable when you leave the room. Then, stranger anxiety appears. Your child gets agitated when any unfamiliar person picks her up. So, as children travel toward their first birthday, the universal friendliness of early infancy is gone. While they may still joyously gurgle at the world from their caregiver’s arms, it’s normal for babies to forbid any “stranger”—a nice day-care worker or even a loving Grandma who flies in for a visit—to invade their space.

Between ages 1 and 2, the distress reaches a peak. A toddler clings and cries when mom or dad makes a motion to leave. It’s as if an invisible string connects the caregiver and the child. In one classic study at a park, 1-year-olds played within a certain distance from their mothers. Interestingly, this zone of optimum comfort (about 200 feet) was identical for both the parent and the child (Anderson, 1972).

To see these changes, pick up a young baby (such as a 4-month-old) and an older infant (perhaps a 10-month-old) and compare their reactions. Then, observe 1-year-olds at a local park. Can you measure this attachment zone of comfort? Do you notice the busy, exploring toddlers periodically checking back to make sure a caregiver is still there?

Social referencing is the term developmentalists use to describe this checking-back behavior. Social referencing helps alert the baby to which situations are dangerous and which ones are safe. (“Should I climb up this slide, Mommy?” “Does Daddy think this object is OK to explore?”)

Social referencing is not only the glue that permits babies to safely venture into the world; we depend on this core social cognitive skill (“She is looking upset. I’d better not do that!”) to pace our behavior from age 1 to 101. When does the infant attachment response—or need to be physically close to a caregiver—go away? Although the marker is hazy, babies typically leave this stage at about age 3. Children still care just as much about their primary attachment figure. But now, according to Bowlby, they have the cognitive skills to carry a working model, or internal representation, of this number-one person in their minds (Bretherton, 2005).

The bottom-line message is that our human critical period for attachment is timed to unfold during our most vulnerable time of life—when we first become mobile and are most in danger of getting hurt. Moreover, what compensates parents for the frustrations of having a Piagetian “little scientist” is enormous gratification. Just when a toddler is continually messing up the house and saying “No!” parents know that their child’s world revolves totally around them.

Do children differ in the way they express this priceless sense of connection? And if so, what might these differences mean about the quality of the infant–parent bond?

Attachment Styles

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Mary Ainsworth answered these questions by devising a classic test of attachment—the Strange Situation (Ainsworth, 1967; Ainsworth and others, 1978).

The Strange Situation procedure begins when a mother and a 1-year-old enter a room full of toys. After the child has time to explore, an unfamiliar adult enters the room. Then, the mother leaves the baby alone with the stranger and, a few minutes later, returns to comfort the child. Next, the mom leaves the baby totally alone for a minute; the stranger enters; and finally, the mother returns (see Figure 4.1c). By observing the child’s reactions to these separations and reunions through a one-way mirror, developmentalists categorize infants as either securely or insecurely attached.

Securely attached children use their mother as a secure base, or anchor, to explore the toys. When she leaves, they may or may not become highly distressed. Most important, when she returns, their eyes light up with joy. Their close relationship is apparent in the way they run and melt into their mothers’ arms. Insecurely attached children react in one of three ways:

Developmentalists point out that the insecure attachments illustrated in my summary in Figures 4.2a, 4.2b, 4.2c and 4.2d on page 112 do not show a weakness in the underlying connection. Avoidant infants are just as bonded to their caregivers as babies ranked secure. Anxious-ambivalent infants are not more closely attached even though they show intense separation distress. To take an analogy from adult life, when a person who cares deeply about you pretends to be indifferent, is this individual less in love? Is a lover who can’t let his partner out of sight more attached than a person who allows his significant other to have an independent life? Unless they experience the grossly abnormal rearing conditions described later in this section, every infant is closely attached (Zeanah, Berlin, & Boris, 2011).

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The Attachment Dance

Look at a baby and a caregiver and it is almost as if you are seeing a dance. The partners are alert to each other’s signals. They know when to come on stronger and when to back off. They are absorbed and captivated, oblivious to the world. This blissful synchrony, or sense of being totally emotionally in tune, is what makes the infant–mother relationship our model for romantic love. Ainsworth and Bowlby believed that the parent’s “dancing potential,” or sensitivity to a baby’s signals, produces secure attachments (Ainsworth and others, 1978). Were they correct?

The Caregiver

Decades of studies suggest that the answer is yes. Sensitive caregivers tend to have babies who are securely attached. Parents who misread their baby’s signals or are rejecting, disengaged, or depressed are more apt to have infants ranked insecure (see Behrens, Parker, & Haltigan, 2011 and Zeanah, Berlin, & Boris, 2011 for a review).

Still, because these are correlations, if we find that securely attached parents have open, loving children or that distant moms and dads have avoidant babies, couldn’t these people be passing these styles of responding down in their genes? Furthermore, by blaming children’s attachment issues on parents, aren’t we neglecting the fact that there are two partners in the dance?

The Child

Listen to any mother comparing her babies (“Sara was fussy; Matthew is easier to soothe”) and you will realize that not all infants are born with the same dancing talent. Babies differ in temperament—characteristic, inborn behavioral styles of approaching the world.

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In a pioneering study, developmentalists classified a group of middle-class babies into three temperamental styles: Easy babies—the majority of the children—had rhythmic eating and sleeping patterns; they were happy and easily soothed. More wary babies were labeled slow to warm up. One in 10 babies were ranked as difficult—hypersensitive, unusually agitated, reactive to every sight and sound (Thomas & Chess, 1977; Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968). Here is an example:

Everything bothers my 5-month-old little girl—a bright light, a rough blanket, a sudden noise—even, I’m ashamed to admit, sometimes my touch. I thought colic went away by month 3. I’m getting discouraged and depressed.

Now, consider the stressful experiences a baby must go through during the Strange Situation. Do you see why some developmentalists have argued that biologically based differences in temperamental “reactivity”—not the quality of a mother’s caregiving— determine attachment status at age 1? (See, for example, Kagan, 1984.)

Does a baby’s biology (nature) or poor caregiving (nurture) produce insecure attachments? As you might imagine—given the nature-plus-nurture message of this book—the answer is, a little of both. Biologically hardy babies—children who have a gene associated with resilience to stress (more about this later)—tend to be securely attached in the face of less sensitive parenting. However, when a child is fragile emotionally, he needs exceptionally nurturing caregiving to be classified as secure (Barry, Kochanska, & Philibert, 2008; Pace & Zavattini, 2011; Pluess and Belsky, 2010). So, a skillful dancer can sometimes shift a temperamentally “difficult” baby from insecure to secure.

But with biologically vulnerable infants, there is a limit to what the most sensitive parent can achieve. Suppose a child was extremely premature or autistic, or had some serious disease. Would it be fair to label the baby’s attachment issues as the caregiver’s fault?

Moreover, because “it takes two to tango” (that is, the dance is bidirectional), a child’s temperament affects the parent’s sensitivity, too. To use an analogy from real-life dancing, imagine waltzing with a partner who couldn’t keep time with the music; or think of a time you tried to soothe a person who was too agitated to connect. Even a prize-winning dancer or someone with world-class relationship skills would feel inept.

The Caregiver’s Other Attachments

And, to continue the analogy, it takes more than two to tango. Just as a woman’s attitudes about being pregnant depend on feeling supported by the wider world (recall Chapter 2), it is difficult to be a sensitive caregiver if your other attachment relationships are not working out. When mothers (and fathers) are unhappily married, or don’t dance well with each other, their babies are more likely to be rated as insecurely attached (Cowan, Cowan, & Mehta, 2009; Moss and others, 2005).

Figure 4.3 below—illustrating how the caregiver, the baby, and the parent’s other relationships interact to shape attachment—brings home the need to adopt a developmental systems approach. Many forces shape the attachment dance. By assuming that problems were due simply to the parent’s personality, Bowlby and Ainsworth were taking an excessively limited view. What about the general theory? Is attachment to a primary caregiver universal? Do infants in different countries fall into the same categories of secure and insecure?

From Chicago to Capetown, from Naples to New York, Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s ideas about attachment get high marks (van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). Babies around the world get attached to a primary caregiver at roughly the same age. As Figure 4.4 on page 114 shows, the percentages of infants ranked secure in different countries are remarkably similar— roughly 60 to 70 percent (Sroufe, 2000; Tomlinson, Cooper, & Murray, 2005).

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The most amazing validation of attachment’s universal quality comes from the Efé, a communal hunter-gatherer people living in Africa. Efé newborns nurse from any lactating woman, even when their own parent is around. They are dressed and cared for by the whole community. But Efé babies still develop a primary attachment to their mothers at the typical age! (See van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999.)

So far you might be thinking that during the phase of clear-cut attachment, babies are connected to only one person. Wrong! A toddler may be attached to her father and day-care provider, as well as her mom. And, just as you and I connect differently with each “significant other,” a baby can be securely attached to his father and insecurely attached to his mom.

Interestingly, when babies are upset, they run to their primary caregiver—the parent who spends the most time with them—even if they are insecurely attached to this adult. So, the amount of hands-on caregiving (not necessarily its quality) evokes the biologically programmed, security-seeking response (Umemura and others, 2013). The good news is that if a child is securely attached to one parent that may be all that matters for his future life.

In a heartening longitudinal study, 15-month-olds labeled “double insecure” (insecurely attached to both caregivers) were prone to have behavior problems in third grade. But children with a secure attachment to either parent were as insulated from poor mental health as those who were securely attached to both mom and dad (Kochanska & Kim, 2013). This suggests that having one nurturing figure during infancy—a father, a grandma, or aunt—may be all we need to protect us from problems down the road. How does infant attachment relate to problems down the road?

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Bowlby’s core argument, in his working-model concept, is that our attachment relationships in infancy determine how we relate to other people and feel about ourselves (Bretherton, 2005). A baby who acts avoidant with his parents will be aloof and uncaring with friends; he may be unresponsive to a teacher’s demands. An anxious-ambivalent infant will behave in a needy way in her other love relationships. A secure baby is set up to succeed socially.

Again, decades of research support Bowlby’s prediction. Securely attached babies tend to be more socially competent and popular (McElwain and others, 2011; Rispoli and others, 2013). Insecure attachment foreshadows anxiety (Madigan and others, 2013), trouble managing one’s emotions, and interpersonal problems, later on (Pasco Fearon and others, 2010; Kochanska and others, 2010; von der Lippe and others, 2010).

Interestingly, the most potent predictor of problems is the disorganized attachment style. This erratic, confused infant response is a risk factor for “acting-out issues” (aggression, disobedience, difficulty controlling one’s behavior) as children travel through elementary school (Bohlin and others, 2012; Pasco Fearon & Belsky, 2011).

However, the operative word here is “risk factor.” Landmark longitudinal studies measuring attachment at age 1 and tracking babies into their adult years suggest that, while there is “moderate continuity,” attachments do change (Grossmann and others, 2005; Simpson and others, 2007; Sroufe and others, 2005; Pinquart and others, 2013).

One obvious cause relates to the environment. Sensitive, loving relationships—at every stage of life—can transform our “attachment status” from insecure to secure (Zayas and others, 2011). Unfortunately, the most blissful early life does not inoculate us against traumas later on.

Consider a boy named Tony, in one major infant-to-adult attachment study, ranked securely attached at age 1. While in preschool and early elementary school, Tony was popular, self-assured, and still securely attached; as a teenager, he suffered devastating attachment blows. First his parents went through a difficult divorce. Then, his mother was killed in a car accident and his father moved to another state, leaving Tony with his aunt. It should come as no surprise that as an angry, depressed adolescent, Tony was classified as insecurely attached. But at age 26, Tony recovered. He met a wonderful woman and became a father. His status slowly returned to secure (Sroufe and others, 2005).

It seems logical that life experiences might change our attachment relationships for the better or the worse. But research—involving the “love hormone” oxytocin—suggests genetics is also involved.

Oxytocin qualifies as the attachment hormone, as this substance elicits bonding, caregiving, and nurturing in mammals and in our own species (Rilling, 2013). When researchers in the infant-to-adult attachment study explored variations in a gene involved in producing oxytocin, they found that young people, like Tony, who changed in attachment status, showed one variant of this particular gene. Others, with a different, less environment-responsive genetic profile, were apt to stay stable in attachment from age 1. Therefore, our infant attachment style may be more or less important in shaping our adult fate, depending on our genes. (Stay tuned throughout this chapter for research with a similar theme.)

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The bottom-line theme, however, of all these studies is that Bowlby was wrong. We are not destined for lifelong problems if we suffered from inadequate caregiving early in life. But what if a baby has experienced not just poor caregiving, but no caregiving at all?

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To summarize, infancy is a special zone of sensitivity for forming relationships. The attachment response that unfolds during our first years of life lays down the foundation for healthy development in a variety of life realms. Still, attachment capacities (and human brains) are malleable, and negative paths can be altered provided the deprivation is not too profound and the wider world provides special help. How does the wider world affect development during infancy and beyond? To explore this question, let’s look at two crucial infant wider-world contexts: poverty and day care.

Question 4.1

Your responses will differ, but any example you give, such as “I called Mom when that terrible thing happened at work,” should show that in a stressful situation your immediate impulse was to contact your attachment figure.

Question 4.2

Muriel = preattachment; Janine = attachment in the making; Ted = clear-cut attachment: Tania = working model.

Question 4.3

• A researcher measures a child’s attachment at age 1 in a series of separations and reunions with the mother.

• A toddler keeps looking back at the parent while exploring at a playground.

• An elementary school child keeps an image of her parent in mind to calm herself when she gets on the school bus in the morning.

• A mother and baby relate to each other as if they are totally in tune.

(1) b; (2) c; (3) d; (4) a

Question 4.4

The child has an avoidant attachment.

Question 4.5

Manuel should say: Infants around the world get attached to a primary caregiver at roughly the same age.

Question 4.6

Caution Jasmine that her child may show problems with attention and indiscriminant friendliness and, if Jasmine is adopting a boy, have special difficulties developing a secure attachment. However, you can also say these problems should improve with loving care.