Babies seek comfort when stressed
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Don't seek the thing that feeds them, seek comfort
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What About Humans?
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Touch of caring for children and good parenting is responsive and loving
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Romanian orphanage studies
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Overcrowded
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Received no loving touch
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Longer in that situation, the more mental and physical health problems
they had
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Nurturing increases brain size
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Attachment style versus attachment parenting
Families
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What About Humans: Attachment
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Strange Situation: Looking at various behaviors babies exhibit, look for how
babies react when mother leaves and when she returns
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Primary caregiver and infant in unfamiliar room
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Mother plays with baby
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Stranger enters, plays with baby
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Mother leaves
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Stranger leaves
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Mother returns, etc
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Experts used to believe that lots of contact with babies was not good
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We moved away from this belief after the experiment with the monkeys
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Gentle and loving touch is essential to infants development
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Strange situation looked at how baby reacts when mother leaves and returns
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Developed 4 attachment styles:
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Attachment Styles
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Secure: Home base, easily soothed, look for mother
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More likely to have secure relationships with their romantic partners
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Not completely consistent, but usually likely
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Child will play near mom but also willing to leave but check back in
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When mother left, looked for her, child got upset
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When mother returned, child is easily soothed
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Avoidant: Ignore mothers, didn’t care when mother left or returned
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Didn’t use a secure base and check in on mother
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Didn’t cry when mother left
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Ambivalent: Greet mothers, but also reject
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Gets upset when mother leaves, when she return they greet her but are
unsoothable, reject her
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Disorganized: Inconsistent, disorganized
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Engage in avoidant and ambivalent and other unorganized odd behaviors
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All types are insecure, except the secure style
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Attachment vs Attachment Parenting
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Attachment Parenting: Not based on attachment styles, always touch your baby
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Breastfeed
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No empirical evidence that it impacts secure attachment
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Never let baby cry
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No evidence that techniques like “sleep training” harms children
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Sleep training is related to positive effects in some studies
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Share your bed
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Small SIDS increase and accidental death
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Instead recommendation is for child to sleep in the same
room but at a different location
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Doesn’t affect attachment
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Wear your baby (never put baby down)
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No negatives, frees up parents hands, soothes babies since they
like to be close
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Idea that never putting baby down is difficult and stressful for
parents
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Daycare
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Generally children in daycare centers do just as well as children who stay at
home with a parent
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Benefits
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Better prepared academically and safer
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High quality group care settings built for children (childproof)
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Costs
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More behavioral issues
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Evidence of them acting out a little more
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