ABSTRACT
Historically, most people become parents at 16 –25 years of age in the ‘transition to adulthood’ (although in technologically advanced nations this is delayed, creating a dyssynchrony between biology and culture). Young parents’ major functions at that time become keeping the new baby alive until it reaches reproductive maturity and helping the developing infant to learn to protect him or herself. Of course, to do this, the parent too must stay safe. Attachment is how this generation-to-generation process is accomplished. What matters for a successful outcome is not how secure one’s relationships with childhood attachment figures were, but rather:
1 whether the self-protective strategies learned in childhood function protectively in the current context;
2 whether they enable one to perceive and respond protectively to the needs of one’s partner and children;
3 what information processing underlies them; 4 the extent to which that processing permits flexibility of strategy.
