Infant Parent Attachment
Over the first year of life, all infants develop specific attachment relationships with one (or a few) selected caregivers. This special relationship --Attachment-- serves the biological function of protection from danger. It keeps the baby safe. Through natural selection, infants developed the propensity to stay close to caregivers in times of stress or alarm. Babies display Attachment Behaviors in order to stay close and keep safe: crying, clinging, reaching, approaching, and following. The parent (or Attachment Figure) is the baby's only haven of safety.
Over the first several months of life, babies begin to distinguish their parents from other people. They come to know who cares for them and reciprocally interacts with them. By around 7 months of age, then, the baby only directs attachment behaviors (crying, clinging, reaching, approaching, and following) towards their primary caregivers. Young children, therefore, are continually monitoring the availability of their parents as a source of safety and comfort. It comes as no surprise, then, why so many children are distressed on the first days of daycare or preschool. The desire to stick close to a loved one in times of stress-as in separation- is a natural, biologically driven instinct that all children are born with. Through their first relationships with their parents, children come to differ in their responses to separations. Understanding these differences can help parents respond more effectively to their children's worries and fears about separation.
Parents all have their own unique histories and perspectives on their own childhoods. The way parents have processed their memories of their childhood relationships influences the way they approach their own children. For some, whether or not their own early experiences were difficult or loving, they have a balanced view of their childhoods and can sensitively, responsively, and appropriately respond to their own babies' cues (termed Secure Attachment). For other parents, either a dismissal of or preoccupation with early experiences that were harsh, rejecting, or interfering often leads to a repetition of these negative parenting behaviors with their own children (termed Insecure Attachment). These parents are less able to sensitively and appropriately respond to their babies' cues.
Children's early attachment relationships serve as a model for all later social relationships. Over time and through experiences with their caregivers, children develop representations of themselves in relationships. Those with secure attachment relationships--who have experienced sensitive, responsive caregiving-- have more positive peer relationships, are better at resolving conflicts, persist longer at difficult tasks, and can more openly express their negative emotions. This social-emotional competence prepares them to be better learners and have more satisfying social relationships.
Traumatic Experiences, Loss, and Abuse. Frightening caregiving experiences can disrupt and disorganize children's attachment relationship such as in situations of witnessing domestic violence, direct child abuse, and where a parent has had traumatic loss or abusive experiences in his or her own history. In such cases where parents' own childhoods include trauma, they often have difficulty coherently describing the traumatic experiences. Likewise, their parenting behaviors often include subtle displays of threatening and/or frightened behavior. While not as overt as direct parental abuse, frightening caregiving can still disorganize children's attachment relationships and leave them vulnerable to developing disruptive behaviors, anxiety, and other forms of problem behaviors and psychopathology.