How Mother and Child Relationships Impact Adult Relationships

Everyone has an attachment style from which they developed in the first two years of their life. This attachment style tends to stay consistent with each person throughout their lifetime and affects their social-emotional development, and thus relationships with other people. Attachment styles greatly affect the choice one makes in life partners, and how they parent their own children. It is important for everyone to gain insight on their own attachment style if they are to know their emotional limits and how to strengthen their flaws in order to develop a better-self and stronger relationships with other people (Norcross, 2011). It is even more so important for caregivers to be aware of their attachment style and how sensitively available they are to the children in their lives. How the primary caregiver responds to the child’s needs, determines the attachment style the child will acquire. To develop a secure attachment the child needs to establish confidence in a reliable caregiver. In this paper I will be talking about the behaviors and interactions that I observed while watching the film “Babies”, and what attachment styles may be formed as a result of those interactions.

The types of relationships we build as children follow us as adults. Our relationships we have reflect the attachments we grow with our caregivers. Secure attachment allows us to feel physically and emotional stable while the other three attachments allow us to have more social and emotional difficulties in the relationships (Belfiore & Pietrowsky, 2017). If you look back you can see what kind of attachment you had with your caregiver

This qualitative research was conducted to ascertain if the attachment style a person has as an adult is created or influenced by his/her interactions with early childhood experiences. The research was carried out by means of a thematic analysis of an interview of a married middle-aged couple. The interviews bought the themes of Work, Childhood and Relationships to the foreground and these were analysed to establish if there is a connection in our childhood attachments and those we make as adults. It can be seen that there are similarities to the attachment types of infants compared to those that

In addition, according to (Del Giudice & Belsky, 2010), parents have a profound effect on children; potentially generating different patterns of attachment (Barthlomew & Horowitz, 1991). The types of attachment includes secure attachment, which is thought to result from a positive and affirming bond with one’s primary caregiver and to result in a tendency towards

but are quickly soothed upon reunion. The anxious-ambivalent and disorganized infants are characterized with thrilling anxiety during separation and strive for closeness to their attachment figure upon reunion.

‘Attachment’ is a lasting secure and positive feeling that bonds one person to another, one of the strongest forms of attachment is thought to develop between a mother and child. Many psychologist, sociologist, physicians and psychoanalysts have sought to explore the fundamental nature of attachment and how it had evolved. Within this essay I shall examine

Attachment theory suggests that infant attachment classifications may lead to similar adult attachment styles in romantic relationships. Discuss the attachment theory thoroughly. Describe these people’s adult romantic attachment style based on their parent-infant classification: Must discuss all three scenarios

John Bowlby’s attachment theory (1991) argued that infants are motivated to engage in an organized behavioral system that ensures preferred others, usually the primary caregivers, remain close, provide support and function as a “secure base”. Bowlby, along with other theorists (e.g. Ainsworth, 1969, 1985, 1989, 1991; Main et al., 1985; Sroufe and Waters, 1977), argues that the ways in which adult individuals form intimate bonds with other individuals are influenced by the patterns of relationships with primary caregivers established in childhood. In attachment theory, it is a fundamental tenet that the security or lack of it, experiences in the child-parent relationship forms a template for the patterns of interpersonal relationships the child

One of these attachment styles was suggested to account for the majority of children and was depicted as a secure attachment style (Ainsworth, 1971, 1978). Secure attachment was suggested to account for 70% of the children, and consisted of traits that the child signified during the experiment, such as, responding with positively when their primary caregiver returned to them after a period of separation, despite the child signifying distress when the primary caregiver was absent (Ainsworth, 1971, 1978).The second type of attachment style Ainsworth (1971, 1978) established was an insecure attachment style; however, this was separated into two categories: anxious and avoidant. Whilst children who were categorised as having an anxious attachment style were suggested to account for 15% of children, and signified ambivalent behaviour towards their primary caregiver when they reunited with them, children who were suggested to have an avoidant attachment style accounted for 15% of children and avoided proximity or interaction with the primary caregiver on reunion Ainsworth (1971,

Attachment theory concerns the psychological, evolutionary and ethological ideas that help us understand relationships between people. Theorists believe that a child has a need to form attachments with an adult care giver to ensure adequate growth and social and emotional development. This ‘bond’ has to be maintained by the care giver and mostly uninterrupted to ensure a child grows into a happy and confident, adapted adult.

Attachment theory constituted by John Bowlby suggested the child’s early attachment with a primary caregiver predicts their later adulthood relationship style. There are three patterns of adult attachment theory: secure, avoidant, and ambivalent relationship styles.

Each individual has their own style of attachment, whether it is secure attachment, ambivalent attachment, avoidant attachment, or disorganized attachment. Attachment styles develop early on in life and seem to develop over time based on one’s experiences and interactions with other people. Some seem to have more secure attachments than others and some seem more shut off and insecure with their attachments. In a study conducted by Dr. Mary Ainsworth, called “Strange Situation”, attachment behaviors were explored, where Ainsworth measured the reactions of children when separated from their caregiver. This study showed the vast differences in reactions of children with different attachment styles (Firestone 2016). Different attachment styles seem to be a product of the environment the child was raised in, whether it was a loving, secure environment, or a dysfunctional, less nurturing environment.

Attachment is the emotional connection we share with those whom we feel closest (Lilinfield, 2012), especially primary caregiver. Infant attachment styles were quantified by The Strange Situation test that has been developed by Mary Ainsworth (Peterson, 2012). There are three styles of attachment which are secure attachment (Type B), insecure avoidant attachment (Type A) and anxious- ambivalent insecure attachment (Type C). Adults with Type B attachment secure relationship was characterised by intimate, comfort in being emotionally close, trust and also self-disclosure. Meanwhile, relationship of Type A attachment people were described as superficial, cold and aloof. They were also reluctant to have a long-term commitment to relationship.

Karpel (1994) makes a powerful statement by arguing that emotional attachments may be the most important factor impacting couple relationships. He considers the concept so important that he opens with the idea, drawing a connection between the early mother-child relationship and later couple relationships. In my own experience of marriage (10 years in my first marriage, and nearly 28 years in my current marriage), I would concur that our childhood attachment history has a tremendous impact on who we become and how we act out our intimate adult lives.

Psychiatrist John Bowlby (1982) described attachment as a bond that exist at the early estates of an infant’s life and caregiver; mothers are seen as the primary caretakers. According to Palm (2014a), infants are biologically wired to perform a series of behaviors in order to seek proximity with the main caregiver in order to get their basic needs met, these behaviors involved crying, babbling, smiling, gazing (Rieser-Danner and Slaughter, 2014). Crying and communicating distress is a form use by children to seek proximity also infants used babbling, smiling, and gazing to initiate social engagement (Palm, 2014b )