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Bowlby's Becoming Attached

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Recommended: Attachment theory studies

Becoming Attached
What is your "take-away" message of this text regarding attachment?
After reading Becoming Attached, I gained a deeper understanding of how important healthy attachments are early in life. As a future school counselor, I can see more of how important attachments are and knowing who a child has formed a secure attachment too or even if they have a healthy attachment to someone. A chapter that stood out to me was Chapter 4. This chapter discussed one of Bowlby's papers on thieving children. The purpose of the paper was to unveil why some children misbehave. Through his paper, he made a connection between an affectionless children and separation between a mother and child. Of course, my mind immediately had the question of "What …show more content…

Belsky believed that by looking in to the developmental history, personality, marital relations and work of a parent can influence the parenting style, along with the child's developmental stage and characteristic. When looking at the model and the book they generally go hand in hand. The book talks about how forming a secure attachment effects how a person will act when they are older. If you look back into the developmental history of a parent, you can see how they were raised and how it influenced them in their childhood and adult lives. Of course, if a parent had a poor connection or attachment to their parent, it does not necessarily mean they will parent the same way. The book encourages that they deal with their problems and wounds to improve their relationships with other. By dealing with the wounds, if can help for a secure attachment with their child, but if the parent doesn't work through their problems, it can cause the same avoidant or unsecure attachment as they …show more content…

It is interesting to read and think about how the relationships we form when we are very young affects us. Becoming Attached is an awesome resource to have when you are looking for support on the importance of attachment. Belsky's model when drawn out and understood fits into attachment styles in both the parents and children's lives. I think with today's fast-moving society, the importance of attachment is weakening or unknown to others. Like the ending of the book says, we place more attention on achievement and power in children today that it causes a hindrance on secure attachments and also has changed parenting styles. I do agree with Karen's call for more research on attachment. It would be interesting read more about attachments in today's society and how it has changed, although, it is apparent when you look into the lives of some families especially if you work in the education

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Humans and need love and attachments like we need water and air. As we move throughout our lives from babies to adults attachments, have essential roles to play from making sure our biological needs are met by providing us with comfort, trust, and a sense of interconnectedness. Since attachments are such an integral and emotional part of our lives, it makes sense why we are separated from or lose people we are attached to it can be such an excruciating experience. For children losing attachment figures can be an especially scaring experience leaving wounds that may last into adulthood and well beyond. Such was the case for a woman named Francine Cournos, author of City of One: A Memoir.

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Louise Harms multi-dimensional approach is a vital framework that will be used while exploring the inner and outer worlds of both theories. The attachment theory was first and originally formed from the work of a psychologist named John Bowlby and explored by another source named Mary Ainsworth, a developmental psychologist. According to John (2005, pg. 30) he explains that by understanding the inner world of a child’s needs which is based on their biological, psychological and spiritual aspect, the child will be able to maintain a stable and healthy

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In this book specifically, the separation of children from their mothers. From the moment their mothers say goodbye, children consider their mothers to be, “larger than life,” (7). In their mothers’ absence, children long for their care and support. This highlights the importance of a mother’s role in a child’s life. Even in more developed countries, some children suffer psychologically while growing up due to the absence of a mother-figure, or any other parental figure.

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(Carpenter and Huffman, 2013 p.278) In her studies of infants, she placed the mother in a room with the child (securely attached), then introduced a stranger to the child(anxious/ambivalent), then the mother would leave the room leaving the stranger with the child(anxious/avoidant), then mother would return (disorganized/disoriented attachment). Observations of the child's reactions towards the mother and stranger in each of these segments were analyzed. From this, Ainsworth was able to conclude the bonding the child had toward their mother. The more attached the child, the more they responded to the mother coming and going, either by clinging, crying or following.

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Although we are studying theories, some of them appear to explain human behavior and personality with certain accuracy. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth theories of attachment can also explain what happens to people when attachment to their parents or caregivers is healthy or potential problems that could occur due to detachments. They suggest that individuals raised with secure attachments to their primary caregivers help them to feel secure; moreover, these children appear to be more socially skilled and less likely to experience major emotional disturbances. However, failure to form healthy attachments, especially mother-child, could serve as a descriptive mechanism for many negative psychological outcomes later in the life of an individual,

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The works of British psychologist, psychoanalyst, and psychiatrist John Bowlby, and Canadian developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth revolutionized the idea of attachment. Bowlby came up with the basic ideas on child attachment and their ties to the caregiver, and Ainsworth developed the way we test the attachment of infants in a observational measure she coined the “The strange situation”. This test is now an accepted way of assessing and measuring an infant’s level of attachment to the primary caregiver. The idea of attachment explains how the first close relationship an infant has can have lifelong implications and affect the quality of all other relationships (Fitton, V.A. 2012). Both Bowlby and Ainsworth’s research tried to reveal and

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Attachment theory focuses on the idea that a person can have an emotional bond with someone that goes beyond distance and time. (Bretherton, 1992, p. 762) Also attachment theory says that the attachment does not have to be reciprocated. Bowlby’s basic idea was that a child has a tie to its main caregiver (mother), with a focus on the social, emotional and cognitive development of the child. (Bretherton, 1992, p. 762)

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With research, it has become apparent that there is a correspondence between mothers and children on the basis that attachment. Attachment depends on the reaction from mothers to her child’s emotional cues. (Feldman, 2012, Chapter

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In 1969, John Bowlby made the connection that formed relationships and attachments to caregivers contributes to future development and growth. The attachment theory focuses on relationship association between caregivers and their children. Children who established a foundation with a caregiver despite their biological relation, gain much needed support. Establishing support, encourages a child’s development. The comfort of safety, allows children to feel secure in taking risks (Groman, 2012).

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One of the main theories in Developmental psychology is the attachment theory that was devised by Bowlby (1969) and was added to in 1973, by Mary Ainsworth. The attachment theory surrounds the bond between a primary care giver and a baby. They believe that attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space. In 1930 Bowlby worked as a psychiatrist in a children’s unit, where he treated many emotionally disturbed children, this lead him to consider the relationship between mother and child and the impact that could have on the child’s development. Bowlby believed that the attachment process was an all or nothing process and that you either were attached or were not attached.

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It is based on the attachment theory that considers early relationships between children and their caregivers provide a template or internal working models for external relationships. Children who experienced moderately secure attachments during their childhood are more likely to live adult relationships with trust and sense of worth than those with insecure attachments (p. 5). Children's experience of a secure relationship during their childhood reinforces their belief that they are loveable, they understand their worth and that they are valuable. With this understanding, they are capable of extending themselves to relationships that are external to the home

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One of the most important factors that affect a child 's development is the relationship and attachment of the child with their primary caregiver. John Bowlby studied the development of the child; he was interested in how childhood relationships affected kids as they grew older and became adults. He was also concerned with the relationship of the child and primary caregiver and how they interacted, and the effect this had on later life. Bowlby 's theory established that children’s earliest relationships shaped their later development and characterized their human life, "from the cradle to the grave"(Bowlby, 1998). The attachment style that an infant develops with their parent later reflects on their overall person.

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Since the ‘50s, Bowlby worked alone and with distinguished colleagues such as psychoanalyst James Robertson, ethologist/zoologist Robert Hinde and psychologist Mary Ainsworth on several different studies. Bowlby suggested that due to the attachment between children and their carers, children suffer loss when they are separated. Bowlby’s study with the ethologist Robert Hinde, inspired the idea that certain attachment behaviours have evolved as a survival mechanism (Bergen, 2008). The core of the theory today is that the quality of close relationships affects personality, emotional and social development not only in childhood but throughout the life of the individual (Howe, 2001). This suggests that attachment theory is effectively a biological, psychological and social theory of human development.

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If a parent is uncaring and lacks a genuinely loving role in the child's life the less loving less self-confident and less loving the child will be as an adult. This presents itself as various mental illnesses in life. Peck also discusses past traumas relations to future mental and spiritual growth issues through the idea of transference. Peck states, “transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment ‘(indeed often lifesaving) but which is inappropriately transferred to the adult environment”. Many maps used to deal with problems in childhood are transferred to adulthood and are ill-suited for the task.

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