I think one issue people may have for this is not the initial benefit. It’s things like “when do you stop?” Past a point you go from creating bonds to spoiling the child. And this can go both ways. Parents can also get used to this behavior. I know parents that still sleep with their 4 years olds. They don’t just do it to cater to the child, they are now used to this situation.
The key is moderation. All things in moderation.
BTW, I don’t expect to have convinced you. I believe that attachment theory is functional because I see the impact of attachment work on kids with attachment disorders (especially adoptees), at least among my online peers. It is, again, the extreme end of the model. But that is still valuable info. Just like we know that certain aspects in education are profoundly useful to kids with special needs, and those same things benefit kids who have fewer special needs, even if at some point, the benefit may no longer be significant enough to be worth the cost. Things that enhance attachment in kids who have attachment failures may not be immensely useful for kids in the norm, but I don’t see any evidence that they are ANTI-useful.
I am indeed gambling on my interpretation and extrapolation back into the center of the curve. But given the functional processes in neurobiology that are demonstrated in recent research, I still feel that it is a useful approach, valuable, and a good thing to model in social relationships.
Now, if we just had enough controls and measurable variables to be able to measure anything on the subject… (which is why this is in GD…)
hedra
You’re right, we agree on almost everything. As long as you don’t judge people dependent on whether they do AP or not, it doesn’t bother me. Given it’s status as a philosophy, I’m quite willing to admit that it seems a very positive philosophy with no potential for harming the child (ignoring the SIDS thing, which appears to be alarmist nonsense). I think perhaps a few aspects are needless, but if it makes you feel closer to your child, go for it. Where I disagree is that a) I see no long-term benefits of a particularly secure attachment to the child, and b) I believe that parenting plays little to no role in developing the personality of the child. If you could outline exactly what way you believe parenting effects the child, we can get into the nitty-gritty of arguing that 
Also, no I haven’t read BabyWise and in point 3 I suppose I was referring to my intuition, but I doubt it differs appreciably from yours. My problem with the aquamarine example isn’t telling people to do something that will most likely end up falsified, one can only work with the best modern research, my problem is when people do such things and then go on to bemoan the fact their philosophy is called controversial. If you’re right and you badger people into adhering to your philosophy it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much. Until we have drastically advanced our understanding of developmental psychology, I’d be worried if a parenting style wasn’t considered controversial.
As for a more recent cite to the lack of long-term effects for a secure attachment, I think the longitudinal study you originally cited demonstrates the lack of long-term effects of a secure attachment. I’ll try and hunt down a study tomorrow. As for the neurobiology of the situation, ethologists have found that functions present in childhood do not necessarily carry on into adulthood. Just a WAG, but I assume imprinting has little carry-on into adulthood for birds. Attachment seems to me a vastly more complicated function but designed for a similar need.
My interest is particularly in behavioural genetics and group socialisation theory. The behavioural genetics data shows the shared environment, ie. parenting, to contribute 0-10% of personality. I believe the non-shared environmental aspect of personality to be brought about by the peer group, not different parenting techniques for different twins.
Another big difference between our points of view is that while I see the benefits of attachment work with sufferers of attachment disorder, I don’t think it necessarily extrapolates to the population at large. Whilst remedial language classes may be helpful for people who are behind in that regard, I don’t think giving remedial language classes to everyone is useful (although as with AP, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just a waste of time IMO.)
I note the ‘particularly’ part there. I think the primary time that people get pushy about AP is when they think that a behavior is abusive or directly damaging to an attachment bond. Not a matter of ‘particularly’ but a matter of ‘at all’ or ‘appropriate level vs. not appropriate level of attachment’. For example, letting an infant cry for 3 hours, to the point where it vomits, without response, to teach it to sleep, for days on end. Or isolating an infant for extended periods to teach it a particular behavior (or extinct a behavior). (Below that level, they tend to be uncomfortable, IME, not outright dismayed, alarmed, or enraged.) Disorganized attachment and attachment failures do have long-term implications, according to the research I know of. Variations in secure attachment one way or secure attachment another way, or levels within secure attachment? Yeah, not a problem, and no definable impact. People get het up over pushing AP typically in situations where someone is doing something that is directly damaging to attachment - they react by trying to get them to stop. This isn’t necessarily about the difference between ‘solidly attached’ and ‘very solidly attached’. It is heading off the issues with disorganized attachment, avoidant attachment, etc. Avoiding abuse, even moderate.
Cites for attachment disorders and non-secure attachment correlated to behavioral issues, and extensions of attachment behavior implications in childhood/adolescence/adulthood:
“Both avoidant and disorganized attachment and higher levels of maternal depressive symptomatology were associated with higher levels of externalizing problems at 9 years of age.”
“In infancy, these risk factors are associated with disorganized attachment behaviors toward the caregiver characterized by signs of fear or dysphoria, irresolvable conflict between opposing behavioral tendencies, and elevated cortisol levels after separation. Disorganized attachment behaviors, in turn, predict aggression in school-age children with other family factors controlled.” (emphasis mine)
“Secure attachments with caregivers play a critical role in helping children develop a capacity to modulate physiological arousal. Loss of ability to regulate the intensity of feelings and impulses is possibly the most far-reaching effect of trauma and neglect. It has been shown that most abused and neglected children develop disorganized attachment patterns. The inability to modulate emotions gives rise to a range of behaviors that are best understood as attempts at self-regulation. These include aggression against others, self-destructive behavior, eating disorders, and substance abuse. The capacity to regulate internal states affects both self-definition and one’s attitude toward one’s surroundings.”
I also do believe that genetic predisposition plays a role, as demonstrated by this research (but note that they don’t suggest that damaging parenting does NOT play a role):
Perhaps we can get into the nitty gritty another day. I lost too much work time yesterday. 
But I’ll give you the gist of my perspective (and as usual, my gists are several paragraphs long): Basically, good parenting vs. good parenting, and you see very little difference, and the child develops AS THE CHILD WILL. That being the point of good parenting, providing a safe space in which the child can develop, and the genetic intertwining with a good environment of one sort will be much the same as the genetic intertwining with a good environment of another sort. I’ll agree with you there.
But good parenting vs. abusive parenting? I think a lot of research supports that abusive parenting affects the behavioral and psychological outcomes significantly. Perhaps not the personality traits per-se, but definitely affects the tendency to aggression, violence, abuse in turn, empathy in relationships, poor anger management, depression, mental illness of various sorts, addictive behavior, etc. And because (among other studies) recent research suggests that at least one of the factors affecting adolescent behavior is infant attachment, I think that supports my contention that avoiding damage to attachment DOES play a role in outcomes. And even the short-term effects, in childhood, shape how they are treated in longer-term patterns (which then have implications down the line), like friendships, where they fit in school culture, how teachers respond to them, how well they function in a learning environment, etc. Those can be moderated by effective management, as well, but they still have to be responded to, and are part of the entire picture.
There is a lot of interesting research out there that suggests to me that parenting affects our lives significantly, if it is dysfunctional, abusive, insensitive, lacking compassion or empathy, based on power or control exclusively, etc. Just ask any marriage counselor.
I think part of the issue we are in conflict on here is a matter of defining terms. I don’t think that parenting has much if any appreciable impact on the fundamental personality of a child. I DO think that parenting has significant impact on the mental health of that child, and the skills the child has when it reaches adulthood regarding relationships, emotional literacy, and so forth. That’s where parenting plays its role. It doesn’t make the underlying personality, it teaches the skills and models the behaviors. And any good parenting supports the optimum development of the child. And AP plays, IMHO, a quite reasonable role in promoting good mental health (including through avoiding attachment damage), as well as appropriate, caring, thoughtful, effective emotional and social behavior.
Takes me back to the advice I was given when I was pregnant with my first: “Give up trying to be perfect now. YOU WILL SCREW UP SOMEWHERE. Your child will have reasons to talk about you in therapy. Your goal is not to avoid having messed up, but have your child able to handle it as functionally as possible, and be able to afford their therapy when they get there.” (kind of tongue in cheek, but I got the drift)
So your last point, extrapolating back. If you don’t know that your child has a language delay, because you are not an expert, but you employ language supports that would be appropriate to a delay (probably not the intensive version that you’d employ if you knew there was a problem), then you have prevented to some degree expression of that delay. Right? If you have a child who is predisposed genetically to disorganized attachment, or you don’t realize that you, yourself, have an avoidant attachment pattern, if you employ attachment parenting principles (not necessarily to the degree that you would if you were doing intensive intervention), you have again moderated the situation. I don’t advocate that everyone take their kids in for speech pathology sessions. I don’t advocate that parents all do intensive attachment interventions, either. But AP suggests that creating a pattern of response that is supportive of attachment will 1) not cause any harm, and 2) will catch some of the existing issues should they be present, and 3) will teach children to be responsive to others as well (by modeling the behaviors). I don’t see that as useless by any means. Just as I don’t consider talking to children in full sentences useless, naming objects that you are talking about useless, using correct grammar with children useless, using non-punitive correction of pronunciation useless. All those are processes used when correcting speech delays. They are also processes supportive of optimal speech development in normal kids.
(and of course one person’s abusive is another person’s normal, so there are plenty of places to fight there… One thing the AP forums often reiterate is that judging others is a risky business - unless you are a professional, or the situation is dramatically out of line, AND you are fully aware of the internal workings of the family system, you are not in a position to judge.)
am I the only one who thought the above was a piece of crap? 7 months old…3 word sentences…playing alone for 15 minutes at a time? Give me a big, fat, break.
I’d attribute it to being born gifted, myself. (These things do happen, you know… Brendan was playing alone for those spans at that age, anyway.)
But on the ‘I don’t think so’ meter, I wrote it off as a not likely outcome of talking-to-baby. Being talked to doesn’t affect the brain development and physical development that has to happen before language skills and sentence structure are possible. But it does support the development of language once those structures are in place. Can’t make your kid into a genius, but can support the development of genius if the basis exists. (And the kid will tell you in many ways if you aren’t keeping up, usually.)
Heck, I talk to my kids pretty much all the time. But the second wasn’t talking in short sentences until a few weeks ago (around 2 years old). And according to the developmental analysis done by the early intervention people (to determine if he had a genuine delay), he’s exceptionally bright. Still didn’t make him that way. He grew that way, I just didn’t break him. I didn’t even know that the normal attention span for a 3 year old is 8-to-9 minutes until the assessment - his is about 40 minutes. :eek: (Not a kid to leave alone with tools…) Anyway, if talking was what ‘did it’, my kids would have been talking at 6 months. (I talk a lot.)
I think this is where mrsam’s discomfort with extrapolating ‘back’ is making sense to me - it is in the reverse of one process being applied as the cause of the opposite. That is, if you do not talk to a child, their language skills may be delayed. Yep, pretty definite risk there. But talking to them more does not cause their language skills to develop EARLY (for the individual child). It just keeps them from being delayed. Optimal development environment does not mean you cause benefit, just that you remove/prevent deficit. I’m all about providing optimal environment to prevent deficits. Won’t cause more than the prevention of deficits, but hey, I’ll take that.
I hope that clarifies my position. I think that is another bit of misunderstanding in the use/application of the concepts that may have been hanging up our agreement, there.
I think the reasoning that “I did this, therefore my child is exceptional” is part of what bugs many people where parenting advice comes in - it implies that you can do it, too, and if you didn’t, you have only yourself to blame that your child isn’t brilliant (or more brilliant, and how would you ever know what they could have been if you had only done more?). AHHH! (I dislike the baby einstein videos for the same reason - plugs into the ‘you can make your baby be brilliant, here’s how!’ routine. Ugh. They’re nice stimulation, but so is singing to your child and playing with blocks.)
But bitching about parenting advice in general is off the topic, I think.
I think it’s entirely on topic. That’s the problem parenting have with AP. It’s not when people simply do AP and keep it quiet, it’s when people say, “Look at how well my kid turned out! It must be because of the way I raised them.” This implies that people with babies that aren’t as bright because of poor parenting. That’s my problem with AP. If you follow AP, and don’t go around bragging about how well your kid turned out because of it, it’s fine by me.
The language example is more or less what I’m getting at. If you lock a baby up for a few years and it can’t speak, that doesn’t mean the reason they can’t speak is because their parents didn’t speak to them. They would develop linguistic abilities regardless of who it was they heard. I’ll post more on this in an hour or so.
I don’t think that Loren’s early speech is solely the result of a lot of speech interaction. There’s clearly a genetic tendency here as well (one of her mothers was also speaking at nearly the same level at that age). However, having a strong genetic tendency toward early speech (or any other particular positive result) doesn’t ensure that it’ll happen; it takes a combination of genetic predisposition and an appropriate parenting environment for that to take place.
So I think it’s a factor, just not the sole, or even the dominating, factor.
Rhesus monkeys have been shown to suffer from abnormal social behaviour in adulthood when they are raised by a doll in a cage by themselves. However, when rhesus monkeys are raised together (in groups of four or five) they seem miserable throughout childhood but they behave normally by the time they are a year old. Monkeys without peers but with mothers are reasonably content during infancy but suffer serious problems later on when exposed to other monkeys. Only the monkeys raised in total isolation are more abnormal than this group. (Harlow and Harlow, 1962) Essentially, rhesus monkeys can develop normal social behaviour without mothers, but not without peers.
The case of orphans is obviously significant, as they often suffer from “attachment disorders” as you mentioned. Orphans have little or no chance to make secure connections with their peers due to people constantly being moved out of the orphanage and the lack of ANY secure social contact is more harmful that the lack of attachment to a mother.
I think attachment theory is a simple error of causation. I don’t deny that these factors could show up at the same time, I just doubt they are for the exact reasons attachment researchers suggest. I think a more likely hypothesis is that the bad parents are causing attachment problems by not only denying the child contact themselves but by through very poor parenting denying them the secure social contact they require with anyone. This goes beyond sheer vanilla bad parenting IMO and verges into the truly toxic parenting. This is the phone-the-social-services kind of parenting. Denying people social contact causes abnormal social behaviour in the same way a lack of exposure to light causes vision not to develop.
It’s like behaviourism: it fits the data well, it even raises some new points which are valuable to psychology (ie. the typical Ainsworth test as a measure of the mother-child relationship) but it isn’t the grand parsimonious theory it claims to be. Think of it this way: very neglectful parents are unlikely to be particularly interested in making sure their child has adequate socialisation. Thus the data set fits in well with attachment theory’s predictions. So, what we need is an example where children have been without parental attachment but with peer group attachment. It would be unethical to do such an experiment, but luckily a precedent exists.
Anna Freud studied a group of six infants aged 3-4 who lost their parents soon after they were born and lived in a concentration camp, cared for by a series of adults (all of whom died). Here are some quotes from her book about their behaviour towards adults:
However, behaviour towards each other was much different:
(Anna Freud as cited in Harris, 98)
I think that shows to as great as an extent as we will ever no (due to ethical limitations) that it is the lack of peers that causes the problems associated with attachment. It also fits in with the Rhesus monkey studies.
In short, my position is this: bad parenting generally involves cutting off social contact for the infant, which results in problems. Lack of parental attention does not create problems if the attention is met through other avenues. This is demonstrated by the level of maternal attachment being completely independent of the level of attachment in other relationships, which is a reliably demonstrable result of attachment theory.
mrsam, I feel much better now about the recommendation I made when I was a guardian ad litem about not separating half-siblings in a divorce case.
mrsam
In your example, while they have apparently ‘secure attachment’ (though nobody knew how to test for that at the time?) to one-another, they have no attachment outside that group. So there is still damage there. They are hardly behaving as normal children. The lack of attachment stability outside their peer group isn’t exactly supporting them having normal relationships. And is there further detail about their capacity for pair bonding later? Rates of depression? Risk of mental illness? Clearly they have the capacity for empathy in limited application, but what about beyond that? I don’t think that demonstrates your theory well enough. The rhesus monkeys are an interesting analogy, but I am not sure I buy them being a complete parallel model to human brain development.
However, I do see your point regarding Attachment theory and causality, to some degree - there are always behaviors that extend from the same source that could be causal as well or instead. But how does that explain why a disordered attachment to even ONE parent can affect a child’s later behavior? It isn’t always to the mother, who is more likely to manage social contacts, but we’re still talking a step down from optimal behavior. It happens to be that in most cases that are studied, the parent in question is the mother, and yes, a mother whose attachment behavior is sub-optimal is less likely to support outside attachment. But in many of these cases, the kid is in daycare, but still has deficits. The caregivers at daycare still behave normally. The kid still has peers. They go to school. They have teachers. And all these people may even have longer contact with the child than the mother has. And yet, they still have higher risk for deficits, aggressive behavior, depression, etc. Even when other factors are controlled for in at least some of these studies, non-secure attachment still shows up as a risk factor. (Note, the other factors that are being controlled for are probably also risk factors, I’m not saying that attachment is the only factor.)
Still not buying your argument. But we may have to agree to disagree, because I can’t keep this up forever.
As a practical matter, does the validity of the exact causal relationship make much difference? If a parent takes on the philosophy of AP, and says ‘my child’s emotional development is a cornerstone of his or her development as a human being and it is my responsibility as his/her parent to ensure they have secure relationships to support that’, is there any difference in outcomes if the causality is multi-factored or if it is more based on the parental or primary caregiver attachment relationships? In either case, toxic parenting is unlikely, if they are following the philosophy. They think about their child’s emotional state. They respond to their child’s responses to the environment. They choose behaviors that support positive relationship, and they delight in seeing those relationships reflected in the relationships they have to peers and other adults. They become concerned with appropriate disciplinary models, and think about how to apply discipline without damaging relationships. Does it matter if the theory is correlated instead of causal? Same outcomes. (and until the theory is completely blown out of the water by actual research, it still qualifies as a basis for parenting decisions, in the general population)
At that point, only the holier-than-thou people (“look how great my kid is, don’t you wish you parented just like me so your kid could be this great?”) end up looking like idiots. But anyone who just worked with the principles is not going to end up causing more problems, and if they (or one of the parents) had a tendency toward controlling ‘toxic’ parenting, this would still counter it, wouldn’t it?
Also, your theory doesn’t deal with the neurobiology research about dissociation and depression in one parent or caregiver, WRT non-secure attachment and later behavior. As much as you clearly want to show that a single person cannot have an appreciable impact without corresponding additional restrictive behaviors, WRT the mental health and functional behavior of an individual, I disagree. Certainly the more widespread the toxic behavior and the more secondary behaviors are layered with it, the more impact it has. And the more positive behavior from elsewhere, the more toxic impacts are rolled back the other way. Both apply. So even toxic impact from one direction is moderated by, say, even one person in a positive attachment relationship with the child. In which case, again, behaving in a positive attachment-related fashion does indeed have an impact. ‘Even’ other peers who have normal social and emotional patterns has an impact. I hardly think that means that a parent or other primary caregiver has so little impact that they don’t need to bother considering the impact that they may have. Many layers? Yes. We’re frighteningly complex critters. We have long lifespans, which suggests a biological need for flexibility and recovery from negative impacts at one point or another. But that doesn’t mean that improving one of the layers is a bad plan. Far from it. The more layers that are optimized, the better. And yet, aiming for perfection is idiotic. Aiming for improvement and optimizing what can be optimized without undue cost, definitely. AP supports that, IMHO.
And AP is also not the only thing that does. Nor should it be where everyone ‘ends’ their thinking about parenting. It is just a place to start.
BTW, I’m getting the feeling that AP in specific hits a nerve for you. Other parenting approaches have at least as sound/unsound theoretical bases, and some have far more strident insistance that their way is the CAUSE of their child’s goodness… is it just that it uses Attachment theory as a basis that bugs you?
(BTW, I’m finding this very refreshing as a course of debate, since most ‘pro-AP/anti-AP’ debates rotate not around the soundness of the underlying principles, but on whether it is ‘okay’ or ‘sick’ to nurse longer than a year, or cosleep, etc., all of which are optional behaviors.)
Crap? What delightful language skills you have!
I faced similar skeptism, there were many times that I would ask questions and adults would gawk at me and not respond to my questions. Some would instead turn to my mother and ask if I had said what I said. That was when I was two. According to my mother I was speaking at Loren’s age just about as well as she is now. I am thankful my mother took note and answered my questions and spoke to me and did not ignore my speech as “crap” or impossible as so many others seemed to.
You are right, the reason AP hits a nerve for me is because it uses attachment theory for it’s basis. If any of the other parenting theories were mentioned on the boards with less sound bases, I’d attack them as well.
As for the concentration camp kids, I forgot to mention they turned out just fine. When Anna Freud was questioned in 1982 as to their welfare she said they were “leading effective lives”. This is truly remarkable considering they lived their first 3-4 years in a concentration camp, not just attachment concerns.
My main gripe with attachment theory is the emphasis it places on the mother-child relationship. If modern attachment theory has discarded Bowlby’s exaggerated importance of the mother and now allows attachment to include any other individual, then I’m in complete agreement with you. If it now refers to any other adult, I’m almost in agreement with you. My memory of Bowlby/Ainsworth is that it was always the mother they looked at for attachment, and as the template for all relationships. Sorry if I’ve been using this as a strawman. Which relationships exactly can the modern concept of attachment refer to?
As for the Rhesus monkeys example, attachment is demonstrable in primates. Harlow’s experiment with primates was what caused the Freudian concept of attachment to be discarded for Bowlby’s ideas in the first place. Given that, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to consider it a direct analogy.
As for depression and attachment problems, I am unfamiliar with the research but off the top of my head depression has a significant heritability. Do the neurobiological studies control for it? If the person who the baby is in the most contact with is having mental troubles, it doesn’t really surprise me that it rubs off. Since you mention parent of caregiver here, it leads me to belief my understanding of attachment is a little outdated, so I’ll wait until your reply to comment further on this.
I agree, anyone who works within the principles of AP is not going to do any harm. I just don’t want people without the time for AP to feel like they’re doing their child a disservice if the theory doesn’t support the notion.
Dr. Schore’s work (linked in my first post) alternates between ‘caregiver’ and ‘mother’, but leans toward ‘caregiver’. Basically, the assumption that the primary attachment is to the mother, and that there is ‘something about it being the mom’ and not someone else is considered seriously outdated. They do use the term mother when referring to specific studies that looked at mothers in particular. Older siblings count, as well, though typically, they are not studied substantially. The term caregiver implies that whoever is doing the primary interacting with the infant is the one who affects the infant’s main attachment ‘program’. If that’s a 3 year old who is hauling around the baby, that’s who the caregiver is. He also notes in there somewhere that infants are set up to have up to 6 ‘primary’ caregiver attachments in the infant period, and only after it passes that mark does the stress level of just stacking up more attachment bonds have any measurable effect (such as turnover in daycare, etc.). At least I think that’s in there… could be another cite. But there’s far more subtlety than the original theory (which was highly culturally bound and therefore suspect just from that) contained.
So, yes, it has definitely advanced from the basics. I bristle at the ‘mother is the key’ thing, myself, because hey, our primary caregiver for Gabe was my husband. He stayed home with him, spent the majority of time with him from 9 weeks to 1 year. Not me. Sure I breastfed and all, but he was the caregiver. Assumptions that it had to be me were a disservice to the relationship of father to son, in that case. And certainly, with 5 older siblings, some of them played that role with me, myself.
As for the depression thing, there is research that shows that (IIRC, I’m not looking it up at this hour) that when a primary caregiver is depressed, the immediate behaviors associated affect attachment in a neurological way. The child may have to have predisposition to depression to be deeply affected, but the immediate neurological reaction is direct, not indirect. That is, the behavior related to speed of reflection of facial expression, contact, vocal response, etc., and degree thereof does have a real role in the process. The Schore links have specifics, but you can also look it up. I am not certain how much they controlled for, but basically, there is some suggestion from the research that ‘inherited’ depression might not be so genetic, just as ‘inherited’ high blood pressure can be caused by in-utero conditions. So yes, it follows the mother-child pattern, but it is conditional, not genetic. Same with certain cancers, and so forth. There is just more going on in the current understanding of ‘development’ than we accounted for in genetics.
I think that if you look at the Schore links, you’ll see a lot has been done with the original concept. There’s far more going on in the neurobiology than we ever thought. There’s more cross-functionality with others (and that is reflected in patterns later), and there’s more implication of things we tend to be pretty calm about, like even brief bouts of depression in primary caregivers.
Take a look at those, I think you’ll find it interesting.
And we won’t get into the whole Babywise discussion (for things that have less foundation in hard science…). I think both our heads would explode.
(and yes, there are a few AP sites that suggest that the theory go back to the mom-is-key thing, but they typically also have another agenda, that is a stay-at-home-mom emphasis, and are trying to back THAT agenda up with AP… which again ticks me off - who let dads off the hook? And if the mom is all that counts, then I guess careful selection of daycare is pointless, and women should all give up their careers and stay home… etc. But in the current incarnation of the underlying theory, it is more: IF mom is typically the main caregiver, she should support attachment as a main process of child development especially in infancy. And so should all the other people to whom the child is attached! Like grandma, daycare provider, and older sibs, aunts/uncles, and so on and so forth…)
Well, I don’t think I have much problem with the modern incarnation of attachment theory then. I’ll definitely look into those links you suggested. A few questions for you, if you have the time to explain at all over the next few days or so:
Just how young can the caregiver be, then? Would it be acceptable to you to explain the rhesus monkey and concentration camp examples in terms as reciprocity of care-giving in the infants?
What is now unclear to me is the distinction between attachment and the development of a dyadic sociocognitive module. Are these two things appreciably different, or are they the same?
My remaining gripe is the situation where a baby is raised with peers but without parents. The evidence suggests that this is far worse than being raised without peers but with a mother. While I’m aware that adoptees suffer attachment problems, this seems to me as a result of the transient relationships they experience causing social difficulties rather than the absence of an attachment with a caregiver figure.
Thanks for your patience, and sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusions initially. Holier-than-thou parenting styles are one of my pet hates, but if it’s carried out without the preachy overtones I can see no harm in AP. Still strikes me as synonymous with intuition, though.
I’d love to see a cite for this if you know of one.