Theories of Attachment

He was a proponent of progressive education and believed that children needed attention, affection, and freedom to develop optimally (1940). None of these interests has become as much a part of Bowlby’s legacy as his work on maternal deprivation.

far less than the later costs of institutional care and delinquency (1951

far less than the later costs of instit

For example, Bowlby believed that families, especially poor families, needed greater assistance. He thought that more people should be trained professionally in marriage and child guidance and in work with parents of the very young. He wanted the public to understand that the funds required to put supportive programs in place would be

Bowlby’s work with troubled youths led him to believe that the critical questions to be asked are: What conditions in a child’s rearing lead to stability and strength rather than deviance? How can we nurture such strengths? How can we help young children see that everyone has positive and negative thoughts and feelings about the people we love? How do we give serious attention to the costs of early separation from family? What policies can be put in place to avert these situations? Bowlby fought to send the message that policies needed changing.

Bowlby felt certain his understanding was key to a more progressive model, but at the time, nearly all research was quantitative. Today qualitative research studies are met with respect that did not exist in Bowlby’s time. The dilemma was in rating such qualities as abusiveness, unkindness, and mistreatment, even when these were acknowledged by the psychoanalytic community. Bowlby was sure that, beyond actual abuse or cruelty, unresponsive or manipulative parenting styles contributed to later mental health problems in individuals.
It was for these reasons that Bowlby is best known for his studies and theories of attachment based on early parent-child separation. It was not that attachment theory captured his interest more than other broad areas of early development, but parent-child separation could be easily documented and was less open to interpretation or misunderstanding than, for example, determining what constitutes unresponsive maternal behavior.

Bowlby proposed that often the attitude of a parent toward a child is deeply affected by unresolved issues from his or her own childhood

lifelong struggles for the individual. The second, which today seems like an ordinary idea, is that the emotional attitude of a parent toward a child has life-shaping effects

The first of these, which received much negative attention in his early career, is that separation from or the death of a mother results in

No discussion of attachment theory is complete without the voice of Harvard’s Dr. Jerome Kagan