Research into mother-child relationships

Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation

Ainsworth devised the Strange Situation in the late 1960s as part of her studies of motherchild interaction in the first year of life. The Strange Situation consists of a 20-minute session in which mother and one-year-old child are first introduced into a playroom with an experimenter. The mother is then asked to leave the room for three minutes, leaving the child with the experimenter, and to return. After the reunion with the child, both mother and experimenter go out of the room for three minutes, leaving the child on its own. Mother and child are then once more reunited. The whole procedure is videotaped and rated, focussing particularly on the response of the child to separation and reunion. The aim is to elicit individual differences in coping with the stress of separation. Four major patterns of response have been identified (see table).

The Adult Attachment Interview

The Adult Attachment Interview was devised by Main and her co-workers (1985) as a tool for assessing the working models or inner world of the parent with respect to attachment. It is a semi-structured interview in which the subject is asked: to choose five adjectives which best describe the relationship with each parent during childhood, and to illustrate these with specific memories to describe what they did when they were upset as a child to which parent they felt closer, and why whether they ever felt rejected or threatened by their parents why they think their parents behaved as they did how their relationship with their parents has changed over time how their early experiences may have affected their present functioning. The interviews were audiotaped and rated along eight scales: loving relationship with mother loving relationship with father role reversal with parents quality of recall anger with parents idealisation of relationships derogation of relationships coherence of narrative. The state of mind with respect to attachment of the interviewees can then be reliably assigned to one of four categories (see table).
Source: Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory, Brunner Routledge 1993
Colin White, Edinburgh Gestalt Institute 2005

Attachment patterns
1-year-old child (The Strange Situation)
Secure These children are usually (but not always) distressed by separation from a parent. On reunion, they greet their parent, receive comfort if required, and then return to excited or contented play. About 60% of children fall into this category. They generally have parents who respond appropriately and consistently to their distress. Avoidant These children show few overt signs of distress on separation, and ignore the parent when they are reunited, especially on the second occasion when presumably the stress is greater. They remain watchful of her and inhibited in their play. They have a pattern of giving most of their attention to the environment, and have difficulty moving flexibly from this to giving attention to the attachment figure. About 20% of children fall into this category, and the adult who is their attachment figure seems unresponsive to their needs for reassurance and security. Ambivalent These children are highly distressed by separation and cannot easily be pacified on reunion. They seek contact but then resist by kicking, turning away, squirming or batting away offered toys. They continue to alternate between anger and clinging, and their exploratory play is inhibited. They give most of their attention to maintaining attachment. About 10-15% of children fall into this category, and the adults with whom they are observed tend to be inconsistently responsive. Disorganised These children form a small group who tend to come from families in which there is gross breakdown of appropriate caring relationships, such as happens when there is physical and sexual abuse of infants and young children, or when children have been in frightening situations with caregivers for which they have had no solution. They show a frozen style of lack of interaction and watchfulness. They exhibit stereotyped behaviours, repetitive behaviours lacking in apparent purpose, and give the appearance of being confused about the world and events.

Adult (Adult Attachment Interview)

Autonomous-secure Give accounts of secure childhoods, described in an open, coherent and internally consistent way. Attachments are valued, and even if their experiences have been negative there is a sense of pain felt and overcome.

Dismissing-detached Give brief, incomplete accounts, professing to having few childhood memories and tending to idealise the past with such remarks as I had a perfect childhood.

Preoccupied-entangled Give inconsistent, rambling accounts in which they appear to be overinvolved with past conflicts and difficulties with which they are still struggling.

Unresolved-disorganised This category refers specifically to traumatic events such as child abuse which have not been resolved emotionally.

Please note that the correspondences between left and right columns are not determined.
Source: Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory, Brunner Routledge 1993

Colin White, Edinburgh Gestalt Institute 2005