Episode 2: Attachment Theory Background

This episode is everything you wanted to know about attachment theory, plus likely a good deal more! I hadn't planned on doing an episode on Attachment Theory but the more I dive into different parenting recommendations the more I see "attachment" cited as the reasoning behind recommendations. I thought it would be useful to look at attachment from a psycho-spiritual-scientific lens, to see what we are really talking about when we talk about "attachment".

The music you here at the start of this and every episode was created by the "Wonderful" Obediya Jones-Darrell.    You can check out his work here.

Show Notes:

Show Notes

Basics on Bolby’s Attachment Theory Findings

Video demonstration of the Strange Situation  

Disorganized Attachment 

Harlow’s Monkeys

Romanian Orphans 30 years Later:

Athan and Reel on Development Psychology and Feminism/Mother Focused Lens

The music you here at the start of this and every episode was created by the "Wonderful" Obediya Jones-Darrell. You can check out his work here.

Transcript

0:31

welcome to this episode of evidence based crunch, This episode is all about attachment theory. this actually, hadn't been my original plan for this episode, but as I started looking into so many common parenting recommendations that I know I wanna talk about from childcare to sleeping to how you get your child around attachment theory is cited over and over again for why you should or shouldn't do something. Whether you've heard about attachment theory before whether you've studied it or not, it might be useful to do a deep dive into this important topic. Before we go any further. I want to issue a content warning. This episode, discusses, cruelty, and neglect towards both children and animals. So if that is a major trigger for you, you might want to skip this one and join us again. Next. If you've spent any time on parenting forums, you've probably seen or heard the term attachment healthy attachment. So what exactly are we talking about when we talk about attachment? Attachment theory was a developmental theory, that was first summarized by John Boley in the 1940s. It states that most infant behavior stems from a child's needs for secure attachment with their caregiver. So babies are born with an innate need to form attachments with other people. Infants need a caregiver who's sensitive and responsive to their needs. And this theory was further developed and strengthened by a very famous study known as the strange situation, which was designed by a colleague of BBE named Mary Ainsworth. And this was more in the 1960s and seventies. I'm going to list, all these studies in the show notes as. This is a very well known study. You maybe have heard of it before, but if you haven't, there'll be a link to a video of it in the show notes. But basically what it was was that in this study, children, between the ages of nine and 18 months were observed. Children were brought in to a room with their caregiver and in the 1970s, the care. was always the mother and they would play together in a room and get comfortable. There would be toys in the room. And at some point after the mother and child were playing together for a while, a stranger would enter the room. The mother and child would keep playing and then the mother would leave the room and leave the child alone with the stranger. And then after a few minutes, the mother would return. and what would happen typically was one of three. And then they later noticed also a fourth behavior during what would happen when the mother left and when the mother returned. And these behaviors were later identified as the main attachment style. So originally Innsworth had noted three and then later expanded it to four. So these attachment styles were. What you hear about a lot is secure attachment. So basically what we saw then was that when the caretaker left the room, the child would cry. And when the caretaker returned, the child would be soothed by the caretaker and calm down. pretty quickly. And the child was not nervous with the stranger when their parent was present before leaving or after returning. So that's important to note as well, but when the, the caregiver wasn't there, the child would be upset, would cry, would scream, but be pretty instantly calmed once the caretaker was there. So what this showed was that infants with secure attachment had at least one caretaker who responded to their distress. and was sensitive to their needs. And the next tape of attachment was insecure or avoidant tape. So with these children, the child would not stress when the parently left and had no interest in really going to the parent when they. they didn't seek any sort of contact with the attachment figure if they did get upset. So if they were upset while they were playing, when the stranger was there and their toy broke, or it wouldn't work, they weren't necessarily going to the, to the caregiver. It indicated that the caregiver was often unavailable during times of distress and the child did not have any expectation that their needs were going to be met. So they didn't look to their parent. And this was observed with, in children as early as nine months. And then we have insecure or ambivalent resistant attachment. So what would happen here was the child would be very upset when the parent left the room. So. Would be really screaming, really crying and could not be easily comforted by the parent when they returned. This was deemed to come from an inconsistent response to the needs from the caregiver. So what this means is that the child wouldn't know whether or not the caregiver would be meeting their needs and would be able to calm them down. So what the caregiver was trying to calm them down during observation, they weren't able to do it effect. So Ainsworth concluded that these attachment styles were the result of early interactions with the mother. And as I noted a fourth attachment style known as disorganized attachment was later identified. So in these situations, the child demonstrated disorganized behavior when the caregiver left. So they were wandering around, they were confused, but also seemed to be scared. of the caregiver when they returned. And it was noted that most such children have had a history of abuse or mistreatment either by the caregiver or another adult. So looking at the bigger picture was that those with healthy, secure attachments have been found to be better at self-regulating both as children and as adults and forming their own healthy attachments throughout their life. And there are a number of studies documenting attachment theory. The strain situation has been replicated a number of times, looking at all life stages from infancy to adolescents. They've amended the project for different ages, different cultures, it's, it's very well documented. Boldly and many that followed him viewed attachment as an evolutionary process. So babies and children have a natural drive to be attached to their care. Parents were not just there to provide nourishment, but rather care and attentiveness were just as important. And this is what formed the attachment between children and caregivers. So this theory was further backed up by Harry Harlow, another researcher, another developmentalist. This study is another well known study. And as I noted in the beginning, this is extremely upsetting. I will describe it and I will. A link with some of the videos in the show notes. This is a study known as Harlow's monkeys and even just writing about it again, I was reminded at how upsetting it was. So keep in mind when Harlow was doing these studies in the fifties and sixties, the rules for testing on animals were very lax. If there were any at all, Harlow's hypothesis was. Mothers need to provide love this buck to the trend of most earlier theorists who were saying that mothering, you know, was really just about providing rules and providing nourishment and nothing else. So in the most famous experiment, Harlow removed newborn monkeys from their mothers and set them up in a cage with two fake monkeys. one of the fake mother monkeys was a wire that had a bottle of milk attached to it. So the bottle that was providing nourishment and the second mother monkey, so not real monkey was soft and cuddly. It was a Terry cloth one. So the baby's monkeys were found again and again, and again, to clinging to the soft, warm Terry cloth mother, and only go to the steel one that had the food when they were hungry. So this finding showed the importance of physical attachment and closeness, and that it was a biological necessity, cuz this was happening at birth and it wasn't just a learned skill. So setting aside the fact that already they knew that we could learn about human behavior from monkeys and still treat them so poorly. the study showed that babies needed more than just their physical needs met. And like I said, this booked to this trend of what at the time was currenting parenting styles, which was often that children should be seen and not heard you didn't wanna coddle your baby. This was really showing that actually children did need, especially babies. Lots of comforting someone to meet all their needs, not just their physical needs for nourishment. So this had been known for a while and the world got another lesson in the importance of early attachment. When the Romanian orphanages were exposed in the 1990s. And if you wanna skip again, skip ahead. This discusses some real horrible neglect towards children. Just as a background under the brutal communist dictatorship in Romania all birth control was illegal and abortion was illegal and as such the orphanages, which were state funded were crowded and completely understaffed. when the dictatorship fell in 1989, the horrendous conditions of these orphanages came to light. It was shown that children, babies were often left in their cribs alone. For days at a time, they were offered uncleaned or cleaned very quickly and bathed with many other children left to sit in their own experiment. Disabled children were often the worst treated. They were often restrained. so very upsetting things. Once these conditions were known and the country began to open up two things happened. Studies began on the effects of these conditions and trauma in general, on children. And many of these children were adopted by loving families all over the world. And what researchers. Families found was that these children were often unable to form any real bonds with these families, with their, their families that adopted them. And they found more and more that the longer child had spent in the orphanage, especially after around the ages of nine months or a year. the harder it was to form a bond, even if they were adopted as young as nine months, 10 months. There was a really interesting article in the Atlantic a few years ago, looking at where some of these adopted children are today. That really goes through this really well. So I'll add that to the show notes as well. So attachment theory was relatively well documented. The fact that having a caregiver that meets the needs of a, of a child during early childhood and throughout childhood is really important. So the style of attachment that a child developed in the early months of life stayed with them throughout their life, leading the ability or a lack of ability to bond with others. So in general, the science is pretty clear. One big critique of the theory is that it's sexist. This is certainly true of the early research that assumes that it will be the same person. And usually the mother that is providing not just nourishment, but all the care and attention. So quoting directly from a paper by Ahan and R. So my, one of my teachers in 2015, this is a direct quote, despite mothers forming the cornerstone of psychological and social theories about human development and systems interest into their own mind and needs remain largely marginalized to the corner of women's studies or the psychology of. Students are more typically exposed to theories and research that use mothers as vehicles to gain insight into their offspring. The subject of focus might be for example, the quality of the mother's caregiving. So maternal sensitivity and how it benefits or harms a child's optimal development. Secure attachment this objectifying gaze as Berman calls, it emphasizes the functional or dysfunctional impact of women on their children and rates their performance based on their effectiveness or defectiveness. And I will have a link to this article in the show notes, but to summarize that what that means in other. Is though we see attachment theory as a cornerstone of psychological development. We see it as a cornerstone of so many parenting recommendations, but there's little research on the impact of attachment on mothers. So what is securing these secure attachments? Doing to the quality of the mother's own wellbeing. This was something that I had thought about individually with each recommendation, but hadn't put together. So I was really happy to find this. I think this is something really important to keep in mind. Whenever you hear a recommendation that talks about this is so important for attachment, what is gonna be the effect on the caregiver or caregivers? And I think it's important to remember that our attachment styles are learned at a young age, but how do we use them as we grow? So if we have our attachment style and they're set, what can we do with that? Both for ourselves and for how we're caring for our children, how can we care for ourselves and care for our children? Like so much in parenting, so many of the recommendations are so one sided and the attachment theory and the recommendations that go with it is definitely the same. So I would question how secure attachment can be. If you are attached with someone, if you're securely attached or bonded with someone that is completely depleted or unwell themselves. So when we're looking for. how important it is to make sure our children have secure attachment. We wanna think about who they're bonding with, who, who are you as the caregiver and what are you providing to them? How does our own attachment style influence how we parent our children? How can we heal our own attachment style for our children and for ourselves? So I think when you're thinking about bonding with your children, it's very, very important. To look outward towards your child, but look inward towards yourself too. And remembering that it's always a healing journey and parenting is no exception to be making sure that however you were raised, you're raising your child in a way that feels good for you and for your child, of course. The ability to feel safe and secure is fundamental. to our own growth as well. So while you're doing this work with your, with your children and with your family, you're doing it for yourself as well. And I think that is very, very important. As I noted in the beginning, I chose to talk about attachment theory because it's the basis for so many parenting recommendations. I know. really quick search, quick thinking. I've heard attachment cited as the basis for making certain decisions for where and how to give birth for strollers versus baby wearing for where your baby sleeps. If they sleep in the bed with you, if they sleep in a separate room, how you train or don't train your child to sleep childcare decisions, going back to work who watches your baby. decisions and discussions around parental leave. How long parental leave should be, who should take parental leave, how you feed your baby chest feeding, formula feeding. The list goes on and on one thing that's really important to remember is that often these recommendations don't always have a correct understanding of attachment theory. I've seen things that, you know, anything more than an hour away from your baby during the first 18 months, or I've even seen three years will lead to insecure attach. I've seen really extreme examples, like studies that came out of the Romanian orphanages cited, as reasons to not sleep, train or not send your children to daycare. so this relates back to what I mentioned in the doula episode, when I said that it's not only important to make sure that whatever you're looking at has evidence, but actually look at what's being measured. So if someone's, you know, gives you evidence for you, shouldn't sleep train. Here's a big study on the problem of children crying and they give you an example of the Romanian orphanage. It might be important to think about whether to you practicing a cry it out or some other sort of controlled, crying, sleeping situation. We'll do an episode about sleep training. I need to get there, but it might be important to you to think about whether you would compare, you know, some sort of sleep training with what was going on in the Roman Romanian orphanage, where children were being left without adult contact of any kind for days. And. I would encourage you whenever you see attachment theory to actually look at what is being cited. What's being discussed. So we're gonna get to the specifics a little bit more, but I think this is a really important backbone episode to understand what we're talking about when we talk about attachment theory. So we're going to dive into all the topics I discussed in many more. You might often hear about. Attachment parenting, which is a specific parenting style, which often cites attachment theory as its basis. We're gonna do a dive into that as well, but that was your deep dive into attachment theory. I hope you learned a bit. If you have any questions, you can always contact me on any of my social media, Facebook, Instagram, as well as the website at the contact information there. thank you for listening to this episode of evidence based crunch if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review on iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe.