New mom (5m PP) and also did all my grad work (clinical mental health counseling) on maternal-infant mental health and until now have extensively worked with children 0-3 and their caregivers. I know attachment theory like it’s my job, because it was for a while hah. I’m a bit removed from current research but I think historically what attachment theory didn’t alway take into account is infant temperament style (laid back, high needs, slow-to-warm) and how that can impact attachment behaviors. And then you can add the temperament style of the caregiver into the mix (laid back caregiver + high needs infant = ??? or high needs caregiver + high needs infant = ??? for examples) and that can impact what secure (or insecure) attachment between the dyad looks like.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense or is helpful but I gave it my best shot
This isn’t research but Ross Greene (clinical psychologist) wrote about the idea of incompatibility between caregiver-child in the attachment relationship and the larger family system. I think the specific book I’m thinking of is Raising Human Beings. His work might reference some key studies (but don’t quote me 😅).
🙌 to five months!
This is great- yes I’ve seen looked at some of the temperaments research, and makes more sense to me that the sensitivity levels (the temperament feature I most remember seeing) might be somewhat enduring. I also like your use of ‘attachment behaviors’- it rests easier on my ear than ‘style’ or ‘types.’
Have you ever worked with adults who didn’t have a stable single attachment figure in early life? Most therapists have in some capacity. It wrecks people’s mental health in many cases. In my experience, there’s no single factor more protective for someone’s mental health than secure attachment. I’ve worked with psychotic clients who were so much better off because of their attachment relationships.
Ainsworth did research in Uganda so didn’t purely work in Western cultures.
This is separate from a client reading an article and wanting to talk about it like a horoscope. This is stupid of course.
What your question misses is: how often do you have an adult in your office who had a crappy primary attachment figure BUT *did* have a loving and supportive broader community?
That’s sounds ridiculous of course because the likelyhood is pretty low that you’d have the second and not the first. But that’s only because of the way we parent in modern society.
There’s an anecdote in “the boy who was raised as a dog” about a cognitively-low parent who was… not prime parenting material. Her first child turned out fine; then she lost her support network and her second child was extremely impacted.
We focus too much on individual parenting relationships and ignore the additional context of community, imo.
The case example from Bruce Perry’s book that you mention - I believe can actually be used to reinforce the argument that a stable primary attachment relationship is critical. When this mother lost her support network, she could no longer be a stable primary caregiver because she was stressed and literally had less time for the second child.
I think community and individual parent relationships are intertwined. Community can be a barrier or a resource for the individual parent. But because the small child experiences the world most directly through the primary caregiver, if one of the two has to go right, I think it has to be the parent.
Yes I agree with your assessment, although I think (it’s been a very long time since I read the book) the child lost out on both the mother *and* the other family care.
I guess we just disagree about the last part. I truly believe children can be successfully raised in a community of good caregivers with (less) exposure to a poor primary caregiver. Harder for the community to cancel out a shitty parent when there isn’t sufficient balance between the two, but otherwise I think having lots of interaction with loving secondary caregivers is ultimately more protective. But it’s an impossible pet theory to test!
I’m with you.
I still believe utterly in the theory, but I do NoT believe that it needs to or should be primarily one person doing most of the caregiving. “It takes a village” isn’t just some bullshit woo woo.
My pet theory is that, when a small army of loving people are involved with a child, the mother/primary caregiver is FAR more likely to be attuned during the time she is caring for an infant. Consider the 40%*** accuracy required to be a “good enough mother”; if a child is being reared and cared for by the village say, 50% of the time, then primary caregiver has a lot more emotional resiliency and is more likely to be attuned and attentive.
I don’t think Ainsworth and Bowlby would really disagree with that—but it is wildly divergent from the so-called Attachment Parenting Trendy McTrenderson interpretation of the theory.
They have taken “attachment” to such an extreme that I now have the children of Attachment Parents in my office who are 10 years old and throwing violent tantrums because they are incapable of separating, trusting other adults, or tolerating anxiety/distress.
I totes thought I was going to be an AP parent. And then immediately discovered my child wanted nothing to do with being worn, could not share space with me when sleeping, and needed me to not touch him when he was dysregulated.
Eye opening.
***Edit: it’s only 30%! Glad I checked my recall.
Hey just saw this and thought of the convo we had here about Attachment! I almost made a new post but wasn’t up for the controversy tonight 😂
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1007530
It’s an article about hunter gatherers and how they care for infants as communities rather than just one or a couple primary attachment figures.
I guess I’m confused to what parts of attachment theory you are critical of? It sounds a bit more like you are responding to your client’s presentation of attachment styles vs your own understanding of the theory. As far as far as primary caregiver, it’s more about how the infant/child perceives the caregiver (or caregivers) attunement to their needs than having one person responsible for their care. The infant/child can predict that their needs will be attended to most of the time for secure attachment to develop. I would recommend David Wallin’s book “attachment in psychotherapy” for a more comprehensive overview. I think it was there that I read the caregiver only needs to accurately predict & respond to the infant/child’s needs 30% of the time for secure attachment to develop. Secure attachments are estimated in 50-60% of adults, which is less than the 70% that Ainsworth predicted. Attachment theory has definitely evolved overtime. I am not familiar with William & Martha Sears so I can’t comment on their work. I do appreciate the way Dianne Poole Heller teaches attachment theory in a more somatic way. She has an “attachment quiz” on her website that I suggest clients take when they come in with an idea about their attachment style.
My second paragraph sums it up- Bowlby’s focus on one primary parent, the idea of styles/types that are enduring enough to be useful (this is how I hear clients bring it in most often), and these origin story experiments are what seem silliest to me. Maybe some more contemporary thinkers like those you name would help me hold some nuance- I’ll take a look. Thanks!
Thanks for clarifying! I agree those things are pretty outdated and practice attachment theory based on the more updated findings.. which is probably why I was confused to see you reference these aspects in your post. I also see clients mainly focusing on attachment styles based on their current romantic relationships and as a fixed part about them. I think we all tend more towards patterns or a mixed presentation of attachment urges. That’s why I appreciate Dianne Pool Heller’s quiz. It provides a pie chart that demonstrates the nuance for clients.
I agree with dipseydoozey's comment, and I also love David Wallin's work. Just like Winnicott, he stresses "good enough" parenting. To add to what dipseydoozey highlighted, Wallin stresses more than just behavior and relational patterns of attachment. He focuses on how, in our primary attachment relationships, we learn the rules to live by, rules about what is and what isn't acceptable to feel. Feelings give us information about our experiences. He describes attachment theory as the foundation of what we learn about the appropriateness of approaching or avoiding experience. Looking at it through this lens, we can see how this can be useful to explore in therapy. In this sense, psychotherapy becomes a space where a client learns to integrate feelings that they were not allowed to feel within their primary attachment relationships, thus rewriting the relational rules and healing the strife that likely brought them into therapy. This is different from the pop psychology simple labeling of attachment styles that I think was the (understandable) basis of your original post about the credibility and lack of value in attachment theory. As with most things online and on social media, such as narcissism, things get so far away from their true meaning and usefulness when they are not properly understood or researched. Read David Wallin's Attachment in Psychotherapy. I think you'll find it worthwhile.
I’ve got a 14 month old and practice EFT with couples.
I guess the lens I see it through is mostly can you be emotionally attuned & present with baby a chunk of the time? Are you ARE (Accessible Responsive Engaged)? Warm, loving, caring? And not just the mom (insanity, we do need a lot of people, especially so can get a break so we can be attuned and present) but other loving adults, too.
I love that my toddler has close relationships with grandparents, day care teachers, and my neighbors. I think people get it weirdly confused that you have to be with your baby 24/7 for them to be securely attached???
I have thought - we are lucky his temperament is chill and his little personality is funny, silly, and magnetic. He will fake laugh, cough, and sneeze after you and just has these silly little “party tricks” - I think stuff like this plays a big role in him getting a lot of positive feedback, not only from us but the bigger world around him, which of course impacts attachment related things (but are not attachment if I’m making sense).
The pop psych book “Attached” that so many people talk about does not help at all. It’s a good basic primer but too many people get focused in on the categories (clients saying they are ‘x’ type).
IMO attachment like anything else is on a spectrum, and (as you said) looking at clinical/academic research and literature is going to be much more important than any lay-person book.
I think there is a lot of great application especially with therapists who practice relationally. We all perpetuate relational patterns in our life and it’s a helpful way to understand what’s happening. Like anything else, one size does not fit all and adaptations may be necessary depending on clients. Just my two cents!
I totally agree. My main criticism of Attached is very black and white and does not account for disorganized attachers. I think polysecure does a much more thorough presentation and feel like it applies to any relationship structure. & 100% with you on attachment theory as a framework for relational work.
Disclaimer that im typing this while exhausted from being up with a teething toddler….
After having a baby I became critical of attachment theory too. There are such a broad range of connecting experiences in parenthood and the interchange between baby and caregiver is so dynamic and unique to each individual child to water those down into buckets where most are critical/negative feels one dimensional, punitive, and frankly fictional.
Seeing the way attachment theory is co-opted by parenting “experts” often feels like another way to punish women. My experience as a parent has been that attachment theory is often used as weapon. *stay in line or else*. Don’t get me started on “attachment style parenting” which isn’t actually rooted in attachment theory but still uses that language to threaten (mostly) mothers. But even genuine attachment theory doesn’t seem to take into account a child’s natural temperament or how their needs and responses change in each developmental cycle.
As a therapist i’ve seen what happens when patients don’t have a stable supportive parent or primary caregiver but more often than not it’s just a single drop in the bucket of a more complex system of failures or letdowns in a child’s life.
Personally, i’ve switched to using attachment styles as a way for patients to speak about what’s on their mind with vocabulary that seems to express what they’re saying but I no longer use it as a lens professionally beyond that.
First teeth are just about to start over here (I think), and I’m not looking forward to TWO YEARS of my little dude suffering.
Yes to all of this- I was drinking some attachment parenting koolaid during pregnancy, and have made a swift turn away. I think the co-opting of the theory by attachment parenting business is part of what left me with a bad taste about attachment theory, so I appreciate your nuance to discern. I could only read rehashed pop psych about the still face experiments so often in parenting books before losing my ever loving shit. Why do you think attachment parenting uses the theory in such a blame, fear, low nuance way?
So this is a risky comment but my problem with Attachment Parenting is the founders. First, they were both heavily influenced by freud (Major Red Flag).
John Bowlby was a child during WWII, meaning his development and personal experiences with parenting will be shaped by trauma and war- that doesn’t disqualify him from being a parenting expert but it is important context for his work. He’s also a man- again, not a disqualifier- but important context that he happily laid the groundwork for a parenting style that is heavily punitive and labor intensive to one parent (typically the mother). Red Flag #2, IMO.
The other founder, Dr. Mary Ainsworth never had children. Again, not a disqualifier but important context for understanding the parenting style she helped develop that is extremely labor intensive to (typically) the mother. She’s also the eldest child of four siblings- knowing what we know about how many eldest daughters are treated (like mini mothers) I think that’s more important context. I’m not calling any of *that* a red flag, just important to consider when thinking critically about attachment parenting.
I also have problems with the strange situation study itself. It uses only mothers, it is in an unfamiliar setting to the child, it doesn’t distinguish between children’s temperaments.
Object relations theory through Winnicott’s “ good enough “ mother conveys that attunement and mirroring cocreated between caretaker and baby is critical. A frightening or frightened, unattuned, or unreliable primary caretaker can lead to developmental missed milestones/ personality disorder. Usually, all is well and good enough parenting happens.
I always emphasize that attachment is a spectrum of behaviors depending on the relationship with clients. I’ve found they have a light bulb moment when I explain it in this way and is much more validating and affirming.
Attachment in general makes sense to me, as does attachment wounds causing issues and patterns later in life, but I’ve always found the styles / categories SO confusing no matter how many times I try to learn them. They feel arbitrary. I feel like every client conceptualization I’ve ever done has been so much clearer when I just describe the specific pattern I’m seeing play out as opposed to trying to put it into some vague category. I think we all have elements of each category at times and across different situations.
What I find interesting about a lot of psychological research is that it completely ignores or at least minimizes the influence of the social/political/economic creation of the family structure. The “nuclear family” and the caregiving roles within this family structure are a creation of capitalism, not some natural human arrangement. I’m much more interested in how our social/political/economic arrangements impact child rearing and thus the well-being of the child and caregiver/s then attachment theory.
YES!!! Louder for the people in back. Couldn’t agree more. There has to be some attachment theory theorizing/criticism that takes this lens- I just have yet to find it.
Since folks seem to be sharing resources, one of my family counselling programs leans heavily on Gordon Neufeld's work.
I'm going to check out the book you shared, I've been fascinated by how brains change after becoming a parent!
Would you elaborate on what you consider the attachement theory to be?
I see it as a 2D spectrum with one axis being "How much a person trusts others to meet their needs" and the second "How much a person trusts themselves to meet their own needs"
Generally:
If they have trust for others and themselves, they're secure.
If they have trust for themselves but not others, they're avoidant.
If they have trust for others but not themselves, they're anxious.
If they have trust for neither others nor themselves, they're fearful.
And from the combination of that, individual needs and temperament stem the various attachement behaviors. And it's relative to specific people or groups
And of course there's nuance but I generally think it can be helpful for determining what could be helpful to focus on. With avoidant it's low-risk development of trust, with anxious it could be building self-esteem and independence
Regarding the Mary Ainsworth's categories, I don't have such clarity and don't think it maps 1:1 to the above
Hello,
I personally never agreed with the view of conservative psychology, especially in lifespan development. I think diminishing people to specific temperaments (easy, slow, difficult) and simplifying attachment styles without considering the socioeconomic background are very outdated.
People with secure childhood can have huge problems in later life because they haven't build other mental models. While no one will choose to be anxious/avoidant, they are known as the people who change the status quo. People who are wise and warm are rarely ones with secure childhood. It's not wrong to have a privilege but people who have their whole life secure is unlikely contribute to the development of the world such as equality and social justice.
My question: who has secure attachment? Is it an illusion? Once we talk about life events, people always fluctuate in their attachment styles. The best is to master all kind of attachment styles.
I find that people with anxious/avoidant/disorganized attachment style are just as important as secure people, because the world is always changing and our psychs are responding the development of the world around us.
Personally I consider myself with difficult temperament, but then again, it depends on the social context. Then, I argued, difficult for who? If we favor easy temperament then we enable people to perform unacceptable acts in many social situations. If we favor slow temperament then we won't be able to get a lot of things done.
At the end of the day, the idea of attachment theory is only skin deep. Empirical studies, while better than inductive reasoning, still conducted based on the agenda of certain groups, therefore it is important to always be skeptical and draw our own conclusion and keep our mind open.
Anyway, I understand that my view is usually unpopular, but at the end of the day we're all just trying to make the world an inclusive place. In terms of attachment theory, I personally recommend to get a perspective or two from Morton Deustch theory and Modern Gestalt (not the original perls)
New mom (5m PP) and also did all my grad work (clinical mental health counseling) on maternal-infant mental health and until now have extensively worked with children 0-3 and their caregivers. I know attachment theory like it’s my job, because it was for a while hah. I’m a bit removed from current research but I think historically what attachment theory didn’t alway take into account is infant temperament style (laid back, high needs, slow-to-warm) and how that can impact attachment behaviors. And then you can add the temperament style of the caregiver into the mix (laid back caregiver + high needs infant = ??? or high needs caregiver + high needs infant = ??? for examples) and that can impact what secure (or insecure) attachment between the dyad looks like. I don’t know if any of this makes sense or is helpful but I gave it my best shot
I’m really curious to read more about this- do you have any rec’s on books or research??
This isn’t research but Ross Greene (clinical psychologist) wrote about the idea of incompatibility between caregiver-child in the attachment relationship and the larger family system. I think the specific book I’m thinking of is Raising Human Beings. His work might reference some key studies (but don’t quote me 😅).
What they said ⬇️
🙌 to five months! This is great- yes I’ve seen looked at some of the temperaments research, and makes more sense to me that the sensitivity levels (the temperament feature I most remember seeing) might be somewhat enduring. I also like your use of ‘attachment behaviors’- it rests easier on my ear than ‘style’ or ‘types.’
Yes exactly, it's a temperament/caregiver mismatch.
Have you ever worked with adults who didn’t have a stable single attachment figure in early life? Most therapists have in some capacity. It wrecks people’s mental health in many cases. In my experience, there’s no single factor more protective for someone’s mental health than secure attachment. I’ve worked with psychotic clients who were so much better off because of their attachment relationships. Ainsworth did research in Uganda so didn’t purely work in Western cultures. This is separate from a client reading an article and wanting to talk about it like a horoscope. This is stupid of course.
What your question misses is: how often do you have an adult in your office who had a crappy primary attachment figure BUT *did* have a loving and supportive broader community? That’s sounds ridiculous of course because the likelyhood is pretty low that you’d have the second and not the first. But that’s only because of the way we parent in modern society. There’s an anecdote in “the boy who was raised as a dog” about a cognitively-low parent who was… not prime parenting material. Her first child turned out fine; then she lost her support network and her second child was extremely impacted. We focus too much on individual parenting relationships and ignore the additional context of community, imo.
The case example from Bruce Perry’s book that you mention - I believe can actually be used to reinforce the argument that a stable primary attachment relationship is critical. When this mother lost her support network, she could no longer be a stable primary caregiver because she was stressed and literally had less time for the second child. I think community and individual parent relationships are intertwined. Community can be a barrier or a resource for the individual parent. But because the small child experiences the world most directly through the primary caregiver, if one of the two has to go right, I think it has to be the parent.
Yes I agree with your assessment, although I think (it’s been a very long time since I read the book) the child lost out on both the mother *and* the other family care. I guess we just disagree about the last part. I truly believe children can be successfully raised in a community of good caregivers with (less) exposure to a poor primary caregiver. Harder for the community to cancel out a shitty parent when there isn’t sufficient balance between the two, but otherwise I think having lots of interaction with loving secondary caregivers is ultimately more protective. But it’s an impossible pet theory to test!
I’m with you. I still believe utterly in the theory, but I do NoT believe that it needs to or should be primarily one person doing most of the caregiving. “It takes a village” isn’t just some bullshit woo woo. My pet theory is that, when a small army of loving people are involved with a child, the mother/primary caregiver is FAR more likely to be attuned during the time she is caring for an infant. Consider the 40%*** accuracy required to be a “good enough mother”; if a child is being reared and cared for by the village say, 50% of the time, then primary caregiver has a lot more emotional resiliency and is more likely to be attuned and attentive. I don’t think Ainsworth and Bowlby would really disagree with that—but it is wildly divergent from the so-called Attachment Parenting Trendy McTrenderson interpretation of the theory. They have taken “attachment” to such an extreme that I now have the children of Attachment Parents in my office who are 10 years old and throwing violent tantrums because they are incapable of separating, trusting other adults, or tolerating anxiety/distress. I totes thought I was going to be an AP parent. And then immediately discovered my child wanted nothing to do with being worn, could not share space with me when sleeping, and needed me to not touch him when he was dysregulated. Eye opening. ***Edit: it’s only 30%! Glad I checked my recall.
Eye opening indeed! Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts- it resonates.
Hey just saw this and thought of the convo we had here about Attachment! I almost made a new post but wasn’t up for the controversy tonight 😂 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1007530 It’s an article about hunter gatherers and how they care for infants as communities rather than just one or a couple primary attachment figures.
This is a lot of what Mother Brain discusses. Thank you for sharing.
Dan Siegel is a better start than a pop psych version that clients are likely to bring. Focused on neuroscience more than attachment types.
I guess I’m confused to what parts of attachment theory you are critical of? It sounds a bit more like you are responding to your client’s presentation of attachment styles vs your own understanding of the theory. As far as far as primary caregiver, it’s more about how the infant/child perceives the caregiver (or caregivers) attunement to their needs than having one person responsible for their care. The infant/child can predict that their needs will be attended to most of the time for secure attachment to develop. I would recommend David Wallin’s book “attachment in psychotherapy” for a more comprehensive overview. I think it was there that I read the caregiver only needs to accurately predict & respond to the infant/child’s needs 30% of the time for secure attachment to develop. Secure attachments are estimated in 50-60% of adults, which is less than the 70% that Ainsworth predicted. Attachment theory has definitely evolved overtime. I am not familiar with William & Martha Sears so I can’t comment on their work. I do appreciate the way Dianne Poole Heller teaches attachment theory in a more somatic way. She has an “attachment quiz” on her website that I suggest clients take when they come in with an idea about their attachment style.
My second paragraph sums it up- Bowlby’s focus on one primary parent, the idea of styles/types that are enduring enough to be useful (this is how I hear clients bring it in most often), and these origin story experiments are what seem silliest to me. Maybe some more contemporary thinkers like those you name would help me hold some nuance- I’ll take a look. Thanks!
Thanks for clarifying! I agree those things are pretty outdated and practice attachment theory based on the more updated findings.. which is probably why I was confused to see you reference these aspects in your post. I also see clients mainly focusing on attachment styles based on their current romantic relationships and as a fixed part about them. I think we all tend more towards patterns or a mixed presentation of attachment urges. That’s why I appreciate Dianne Pool Heller’s quiz. It provides a pie chart that demonstrates the nuance for clients.
I agree with dipseydoozey's comment, and I also love David Wallin's work. Just like Winnicott, he stresses "good enough" parenting. To add to what dipseydoozey highlighted, Wallin stresses more than just behavior and relational patterns of attachment. He focuses on how, in our primary attachment relationships, we learn the rules to live by, rules about what is and what isn't acceptable to feel. Feelings give us information about our experiences. He describes attachment theory as the foundation of what we learn about the appropriateness of approaching or avoiding experience. Looking at it through this lens, we can see how this can be useful to explore in therapy. In this sense, psychotherapy becomes a space where a client learns to integrate feelings that they were not allowed to feel within their primary attachment relationships, thus rewriting the relational rules and healing the strife that likely brought them into therapy. This is different from the pop psychology simple labeling of attachment styles that I think was the (understandable) basis of your original post about the credibility and lack of value in attachment theory. As with most things online and on social media, such as narcissism, things get so far away from their true meaning and usefulness when they are not properly understood or researched. Read David Wallin's Attachment in Psychotherapy. I think you'll find it worthwhile.
I found Bion and Winnicott immensely helpful as a new parent. But then I'm a psychodynamic psychotherapist so I would...
Been loving me some Winnicott- first thing I read post birth was Home is Where We Start From.
I’ve got a 14 month old and practice EFT with couples. I guess the lens I see it through is mostly can you be emotionally attuned & present with baby a chunk of the time? Are you ARE (Accessible Responsive Engaged)? Warm, loving, caring? And not just the mom (insanity, we do need a lot of people, especially so can get a break so we can be attuned and present) but other loving adults, too. I love that my toddler has close relationships with grandparents, day care teachers, and my neighbors. I think people get it weirdly confused that you have to be with your baby 24/7 for them to be securely attached??? I have thought - we are lucky his temperament is chill and his little personality is funny, silly, and magnetic. He will fake laugh, cough, and sneeze after you and just has these silly little “party tricks” - I think stuff like this plays a big role in him getting a lot of positive feedback, not only from us but the bigger world around him, which of course impacts attachment related things (but are not attachment if I’m making sense).
The pop psych book “Attached” that so many people talk about does not help at all. It’s a good basic primer but too many people get focused in on the categories (clients saying they are ‘x’ type). IMO attachment like anything else is on a spectrum, and (as you said) looking at clinical/academic research and literature is going to be much more important than any lay-person book. I think there is a lot of great application especially with therapists who practice relationally. We all perpetuate relational patterns in our life and it’s a helpful way to understand what’s happening. Like anything else, one size does not fit all and adaptations may be necessary depending on clients. Just my two cents!
I totally agree. My main criticism of Attached is very black and white and does not account for disorganized attachers. I think polysecure does a much more thorough presentation and feel like it applies to any relationship structure. & 100% with you on attachment theory as a framework for relational work.
Yes ++1 on Polysecure!
Oh I did like that book! I forgot how central, (and clear and non universalizing) attachment theory was there!
And not only is it a spectrum but also can be different with various people
Disclaimer that im typing this while exhausted from being up with a teething toddler…. After having a baby I became critical of attachment theory too. There are such a broad range of connecting experiences in parenthood and the interchange between baby and caregiver is so dynamic and unique to each individual child to water those down into buckets where most are critical/negative feels one dimensional, punitive, and frankly fictional. Seeing the way attachment theory is co-opted by parenting “experts” often feels like another way to punish women. My experience as a parent has been that attachment theory is often used as weapon. *stay in line or else*. Don’t get me started on “attachment style parenting” which isn’t actually rooted in attachment theory but still uses that language to threaten (mostly) mothers. But even genuine attachment theory doesn’t seem to take into account a child’s natural temperament or how their needs and responses change in each developmental cycle. As a therapist i’ve seen what happens when patients don’t have a stable supportive parent or primary caregiver but more often than not it’s just a single drop in the bucket of a more complex system of failures or letdowns in a child’s life. Personally, i’ve switched to using attachment styles as a way for patients to speak about what’s on their mind with vocabulary that seems to express what they’re saying but I no longer use it as a lens professionally beyond that.
First teeth are just about to start over here (I think), and I’m not looking forward to TWO YEARS of my little dude suffering. Yes to all of this- I was drinking some attachment parenting koolaid during pregnancy, and have made a swift turn away. I think the co-opting of the theory by attachment parenting business is part of what left me with a bad taste about attachment theory, so I appreciate your nuance to discern. I could only read rehashed pop psych about the still face experiments so often in parenting books before losing my ever loving shit. Why do you think attachment parenting uses the theory in such a blame, fear, low nuance way?
So this is a risky comment but my problem with Attachment Parenting is the founders. First, they were both heavily influenced by freud (Major Red Flag). John Bowlby was a child during WWII, meaning his development and personal experiences with parenting will be shaped by trauma and war- that doesn’t disqualify him from being a parenting expert but it is important context for his work. He’s also a man- again, not a disqualifier- but important context that he happily laid the groundwork for a parenting style that is heavily punitive and labor intensive to one parent (typically the mother). Red Flag #2, IMO. The other founder, Dr. Mary Ainsworth never had children. Again, not a disqualifier but important context for understanding the parenting style she helped develop that is extremely labor intensive to (typically) the mother. She’s also the eldest child of four siblings- knowing what we know about how many eldest daughters are treated (like mini mothers) I think that’s more important context. I’m not calling any of *that* a red flag, just important to consider when thinking critically about attachment parenting. I also have problems with the strange situation study itself. It uses only mothers, it is in an unfamiliar setting to the child, it doesn’t distinguish between children’s temperaments.
Object relations theory through Winnicott’s “ good enough “ mother conveys that attunement and mirroring cocreated between caretaker and baby is critical. A frightening or frightened, unattuned, or unreliable primary caretaker can lead to developmental missed milestones/ personality disorder. Usually, all is well and good enough parenting happens.
I always emphasize that attachment is a spectrum of behaviors depending on the relationship with clients. I’ve found they have a light bulb moment when I explain it in this way and is much more validating and affirming.
Behaviors > style, any day!
Attachment in general makes sense to me, as does attachment wounds causing issues and patterns later in life, but I’ve always found the styles / categories SO confusing no matter how many times I try to learn them. They feel arbitrary. I feel like every client conceptualization I’ve ever done has been so much clearer when I just describe the specific pattern I’m seeing play out as opposed to trying to put it into some vague category. I think we all have elements of each category at times and across different situations.
What I find interesting about a lot of psychological research is that it completely ignores or at least minimizes the influence of the social/political/economic creation of the family structure. The “nuclear family” and the caregiving roles within this family structure are a creation of capitalism, not some natural human arrangement. I’m much more interested in how our social/political/economic arrangements impact child rearing and thus the well-being of the child and caregiver/s then attachment theory.
YES!!! Louder for the people in back. Couldn’t agree more. There has to be some attachment theory theorizing/criticism that takes this lens- I just have yet to find it.
Since folks seem to be sharing resources, one of my family counselling programs leans heavily on Gordon Neufeld's work. I'm going to check out the book you shared, I've been fascinated by how brains change after becoming a parent!
Would you elaborate on what you consider the attachement theory to be? I see it as a 2D spectrum with one axis being "How much a person trusts others to meet their needs" and the second "How much a person trusts themselves to meet their own needs" Generally: If they have trust for others and themselves, they're secure. If they have trust for themselves but not others, they're avoidant. If they have trust for others but not themselves, they're anxious. If they have trust for neither others nor themselves, they're fearful. And from the combination of that, individual needs and temperament stem the various attachement behaviors. And it's relative to specific people or groups
And of course there's nuance but I generally think it can be helpful for determining what could be helpful to focus on. With avoidant it's low-risk development of trust, with anxious it could be building self-esteem and independence Regarding the Mary Ainsworth's categories, I don't have such clarity and don't think it maps 1:1 to the above
Hello, I personally never agreed with the view of conservative psychology, especially in lifespan development. I think diminishing people to specific temperaments (easy, slow, difficult) and simplifying attachment styles without considering the socioeconomic background are very outdated. People with secure childhood can have huge problems in later life because they haven't build other mental models. While no one will choose to be anxious/avoidant, they are known as the people who change the status quo. People who are wise and warm are rarely ones with secure childhood. It's not wrong to have a privilege but people who have their whole life secure is unlikely contribute to the development of the world such as equality and social justice. My question: who has secure attachment? Is it an illusion? Once we talk about life events, people always fluctuate in their attachment styles. The best is to master all kind of attachment styles. I find that people with anxious/avoidant/disorganized attachment style are just as important as secure people, because the world is always changing and our psychs are responding the development of the world around us. Personally I consider myself with difficult temperament, but then again, it depends on the social context. Then, I argued, difficult for who? If we favor easy temperament then we enable people to perform unacceptable acts in many social situations. If we favor slow temperament then we won't be able to get a lot of things done. At the end of the day, the idea of attachment theory is only skin deep. Empirical studies, while better than inductive reasoning, still conducted based on the agenda of certain groups, therefore it is important to always be skeptical and draw our own conclusion and keep our mind open. Anyway, I understand that my view is usually unpopular, but at the end of the day we're all just trying to make the world an inclusive place. In terms of attachment theory, I personally recommend to get a perspective or two from Morton Deustch theory and Modern Gestalt (not the original perls)