Pillars in the Making - Dec 2011

How do babies become attached? (Part 1)

My friend Ben has got a blanket which has been kept and slept with him since he was a baby. Have you got any friends, relatives or even yourself have similar behavior as Ben? For me I have a teddy bear which stays with me for at least 20 years already. Although some part of it has already been torn, I still do not let my mum throw it away; this behavior is called “attachment”. Attachment is a behavior which helps babies to form relationship with people or objects around them. According to Bowlby, parent-infant attachment is a reciprocal relationship: Parent clearly has an edge on infants, when they come to form these intimate affection ties. Mothers often form attachments with babies before they are born, as they usually start planning for babies and they can easily feel the baby’s movements or kicking. The most critical time to form an intense attachment with babies is the few hours after they were born, because it is the time when babies need to feel safe the most. So it is very important for mothers to hug their babies as soon as they are born. If baby cannot form a certain amount of attachment with their caretakers, they may have a chance to develop problems in expressing emotion and building up relationship with people in later life. 

The above paragraph not only tells us that attachment is really important for child’s development, but how babies become attached to human beings. Although many parents find themselves become attached to their babies very soon, babies require some time before being  developmentally ready to form a genuine attachment to another human being. Some psychologist did several studies focusing on the development of attachment on babies; Schaffer and Emerson have done an experiment, which aimed to find out two things as follow: 1) how the infant responded when separated from close companions 2) infant’s response directly to these separations. Throughout the experiment they found that infants passed through some stages to develop their attachment behavior with their caretakers.

The researchers have divided the attachment behaviors into four stages; the first stage is asocial phase (0 to 6 weeks). Young infants will produce a positive reaction on many kinds of social or nonsocial stimuli. By the end of this stage, infants will begin to show smiling face when they are responding to social stimuli.

The second stage is indiscriminate attachment phases (6 weeks to 7 months). Infants is now enjoying human company, but they tend to get a bit distorted sometimes. They will smile more at human than other lifelike objects, such as puppets. At this stage, they are likely to fuss whenever an adult put them down. Although they seem to responding to a regular caretaker quickly and smoothly, they enjoy attention received from just anyone.

The third stage is specific attachments phase (7 to 9 month). Infants begin to feel uncomfortable only when separated from one particular person, and this person is usually their mothers. Infants will also crawl and follow their mothers, sometimes would even greet their mother happily when they return, but they will show wary towards strangers. This is their first genuine attachment, because now they know how to distinguish between strangers and their caretakers.

The last stage in this development is called multiple attachment phases, after they form attachment with their closest caretakers e.g. mothers, now they begin to form attachment with people around them, such as father, siblings, grandparents or babysitters. By 18 months, most babies can already form attachment with more than one person; some of them can even attach to five or more people.

After reading this article, I hope you can understand more about attachment and why it is important to babies. Next month I will share some other theories on attachment and the outcome which attachment lead to.

Venus Lai

Reference

D.R. Shaffer (1946), Developmental Psychology, Wadsworth, California,USA.

Cherry, K. (n.d.). Attachment Theory:An Overview of Attachment Theory. Retrieved 11 28, 2011, from About.com.psychology: http://psychology.about.com/od/loveandattraction/a/attachment01.htm

Fraley, R. C. (n.d.). A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research. Retrieved 11 29, 2011, from internal.psychology: http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm