ABSTRACT
There is abundant evidence that human beings are inextricably intertwined with one another from the earliest moments of infancy. From birth, the human infant appears hard-wired to seek human interaction. Even in their first weeks of life, infants who are barely aware of their environments seek out human faces and prefer them to other objects in the environment. Almost immediately, mother and infant set up a pattern of empathic attunement with each other. Infants generally evidence three distinct cries, representing hunger, anger, and pain, which mothers are able to distinguish. Mothers generally hold their babies at the distance optimal for a child’s visual acuity, and they typically reflect the infant’s mood with reciprocal facial gestures. The child thus becomes increasingly aware of other human beings as distinct objects in the environment.
Attachment is the reciprocal bonding between mother and child.
