Attachment theory

Attachment theory posits that infants need to form a close relationship with at least one primary caregiver to ensure their survival and to develop healthy social and emotional functioning. It was first developed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907–90). The theory proposes that secure attachments are formed when caregivers are sensitive and responsive in social interactions, and consistently available, particularly between the ages of six months and two years. As children grow, they are thought to use these attachment figures as a secure base from which to explore the world and to return to for comfort. Interactions with caregivers have been hypothesized to form a specific kind of attachment behavioral system—or, more recently, internal working model—the relative security or insecurity of which influences characteristic patterns of behavior when forming future relationships. Separation anxiety or grief following the loss of an attachment figure was proposed as being a normal and adaptive response for a securely attached infant.

In the 1970s, developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded on Bowlby's work, codifying the caregiver's side of the attachment process as requiring the adult's availability, appropriate responsiveness, and sensitivity to the infant's signals. She and her team devised a laboratory procedure known as the Strange Situation Procedure, which she used to identify attachment patterns in infant–caregiver pairs: secure, avoidant, anxious attachment, and later, disorganized attachment. In the 1980s, attachment theory was extended to adult relationships and attachment in adults, making it applicable beyond early childhood. Bowlby's theory integrated concepts from evolutionary biology, object relations theory, control systems theory, ethology, and cognitive psychology, and was most fully articulated in his trilogy, Attachment and Loss (1969–82).

While criticized from its inception by academic psychologists, ethnographers, and psychoanalysts in the 1950s, attachment theory has become a dominant approach to understanding early social development and has generated extensive research. Several researchers—notably Michael Lamb and his colleagues in the mid-1980s—have shown that the diagnoses of attachment security or insecurity constructed using procedures like the Strange Situation are primarily reflections of what was going on in the social environment during the procedure, external to the child and their caregiver(s). Other findings challenge the theory's observational claims, its claims to universal cultural relevance, the role of temperament in shaping attachment behaviour, the unobservability of internal working models, and the limitations of discrete attachment patterns. Attachment advocates rarely address such criticisms; consequently, the theory's core concepts persist in influencing therapeutic practices, social policy, and childcare policy. Recent findings show that attachment theory is mistaken in assuming that a one-to-one program underpins infant social behaviour. In short, attachment theory overemphasizes maternal influence on shaping children's social lives while overlooking genetic, cross-cultural, and broader social factors.