In Chapter 4 we learned that the attachment between a baby and their caregiver begins in the womb and is strengthened through feeding and physical closeness after birth. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs demonstrates that when these two needs (nutrition and security) are met, they become essential building blocks for a variety of future behaviors and skills, including social and emotional development. Infants are wired to seek closeness to their caregivers. According to Dr. Linda Palmer, “Babies are designed to be frequently fed in a fashion that requires skin-to-skin contact, holding, and available facial cues. Beneficial, permanent brain changes result in both parent and infant from just such actions” (Palmer, 2013).

Young children’s brains are positively shaped when their caregivers respond to their needs and when caregivers maintain crucial physical and emotional closeness to them. Even short periods of separation can cause a stress response in a young child. This is why they cry when they are put down or when they are not close to their mothers or primary caregivers. Physical touch is a powerful and biological way for children to connect because this is necessary for their well-being and survival.

Birth mothers and primary caregivers have an overwhelming sense to be near their children as newborns and well into their early childhood. Unfortunately, cultural and policy factors play a role in the amount of time a primary caregiver spends with their child. The lack of a rigorous and extensive paid parental leave policy in the United States leaves many primary caregivers in a situation where they are forced to leave their young children in another person’s care in order to go back to work. A review of research concludes that “babies of mothers with full-time jobs are more likely than other babies to have avoidant attachments” (Collin, 1991). Parental leave will be described more in the Health and Wellness section of this chapter. The types of attachment styles will be explained in the following section.

Similarly, cultural and societal trends can also impact the parent-child relationship. In the United States, the trend to let babies “cry it out” became popular as the economic and social landscape changed for families. Friends and family, even doctors, prescribed that mothers allow their children to cry in order to avoid raising whiney, dependent people. In a popular early 20th century manual, Dr. L Emmet Holt advised parents to simply allow a child to cry it out for an hour or longer in extreme cases. He stated “Such discipline is not to be carried out unless one is sure as to the cause of the habitual crying” (Holt, 1907).

It is important to note that much of the research and advice about responding to young children came from men. Their hypotheses and research countered the instincts and cultural knowledge passed along to mothers over generations.

“In humans, routine mother-infant separation shortly after birth is unique to the 20th century. This practice diverges from evolutionary history, where neonatal survival depended on close and virtually continuous maternal contact. Although from an evolutionary perspective skin-to-skin contact (SSC) is the norm, separating the newborn from its mother soon after birth has now become common practice in many industrialized societies” (Moore et al, 2012).

Practices that go against natural instincts and biological needs have proven to be unhealthy for children.

Perhaps the most notable cases of neglectful attachment come from the Romanian orphanage studies. Orphanages in Romania were known to be overcrowded with children, severely understaffed, and abuse and neglect was common. These conditions were brought to the forefront of the media after political change in the 1990’s. Young children laid in their cribs all day with little to no stimulation, even though they encountered several adults throughout the day. They were not held, rocked, or sang to. The only interaction they received was when they were being fed, bathed or diapered and this was done on a strict schedule.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School decided to study a group of 136 children from several Romanian orphanages to see how institutionalized conditions impacted their development. Their ages ranged from 6 months to 3 years old and they were studied over several years. What the researchers found was a severe impact on brain development and subsequent skill development. These children had smaller brains which meant that they had lower volume of neurons and nerve fibers (Sheridan et al, 2012). This type of neglect led to abnormal cognitive, language, and motor development as well as abnormal personality development. Children displayed deficits in executive functioning as well as social functioning (Nelson, 2017).

Children who had not received caring interactions within these institutions had impacted attachment styles. The Harvard researchers concluded that “children who were at one time institutionalized seem to display non-normative attachment and behaviors toward caregivers compared to the average child of the same age group” (Riddle, 2017). Some of the children were sent to foster homes during the study and researchers noted these children, especially the youngest ones, showed improvements in many areas of development. The children who remained in institutionalized care did not show any improvements.

As demonstrated by these studies and through generations of lived experience, children need loving and caring attachments to their caregivers. Caregivers also need the ability and time to attend to their child’s needs, especially when they are very young. Positive attachments are cycled through to future generations. “The effects of infant attachment are long-term, influencing generations of families (Colin, 1991). A child who forms a healthy attachment will likely become a parent who is able to form a healthy attachment to their own child.

Next, we will take a look at research from the 20th century which describes theories of attachment and explains the different ways attachment is measured in children.