ABSTRACT
The topic of the infants emotional tie to mother has been a focus of theorizing for hundreds if not thousands of years, Freud, however, is probably responsible for modern scientific interest in the topic, as he asserted that the relationship between mother and baby served as a “prototype” that would shape the remainder of the developing individuals life, especially his capacity to love and to work. But it is John Bowlby, the eminent British psychiatrist, who broke from the ranks of Freudian psychoanalysts to develop the prevailing theory of attachment that guides most developmental research on the topic today Rather than considering the full scope of research and thinking about the infant-parent at tachment relationship in this chapter, I focus upon results from several longitudinal studies that 1 have been involved in over the past 25 years in order to illuminate the antecedents and sequelae of individual differences in infant-parent attachment security Thus, in this chapter, I report on find ings pertaining to the origins or determinants of individual differences in infant-parent attachment security. In addition to considering the classical question of how the quality of maternal care affects the development of secure and insecu re infant-mother attachment relationships, I address the role of temperament, individual differences in infant-father attachments, and broader contextual influences on infant-parent attachment security, including early child care, social support, marital quality, and work-family relations. Before describing this work and summarizing results, it is appropriate to review some core tenets of attachment theory that guided my research as well as that of many others,
Attachment theory can be vie wed, in large part, as a theory of personality development, one which emphasizes the role of early experiences in shaping psychological and behavioral development, In contrast to the psychoanalytically trained psychiatrists whose ideas Bowlby came to reject, Bowlby regarded Freudians as inappropriately emphasizing the role of the individuals inner fantasies in shaping personality, at the expense of actual lived experiences. There were many possible aspects of early experience that could be considered developmental!}7 important, Bowlby s clinical experience alerted him to the adverse effects of early separations from the mother on emotional well being, both in terms of the short-term distress it evoked and the longer-term consequences it appeared to
have on children. In pondering such phenomena, Bowlby found himself dissatisfied with existing, secondary-drive explanations which suggested that because the mother satisfied the infants primary need for nourishment, she became associated with feelings of satisfaction and, thereby, came to be regarded positively by the infant.
