Nina : Hello everyone, Jeanne Beauperin and I, Nina Monteil, developmental psychologists, will present in this podcast today the theme of mother-child attachment. In order to explain it, we will share both our knowledge on this topic through the experience of Mary Ainsworth’s strange situation. Jeanne I will let you explain to our listeners who Mary Ainsworth is and what the strange situation is.
Jeanne : Hello everyone, hello Nina. Indeed, through my research, I have worked a lot on mother-child relationships. Mary Ainsworth was a developmental psychologist who created what she called The Strange Situation in 1960. At the beginning of this experience, a child is placed in a room with its mother, then he is either separated from his mother and in the presence of a stranger or with is mother and a stranger. The purpose is to observe the mother’s behavior with her child, but also the way in which the child reacts to separations with his attachment figure and to the presence of the stranger whether his mother is present or not. In addition, the child’s exploration behaviors are also observed in different situations.
Nina : Indeed, Jeanne, this experience was created in order to operationalize the internal operating models, that is to say all the expectations that young children have towards their loved ones and which develop gradually thanks to their relationship experiences. Indeed, the mother-child relationship is the first relationship attachment that the child creates but also the most important for his future interactions. During the various experiments carried out by Mary Ainsworth, she was able to demonstrate different types of attachment of the child to his mother.
Jeanne : Indeed, she identified 3 distinct types of attachment: the secure type, the insecure-avoidant type and the ambivalent-resistant insecure attachment type.
Children with a secure attachment type have an attachment system that works best. Indeed, they will seek contact with their mother during stressful situations but will quickly be reassured by them, which will allow them to explore their environment.
Those who present an insecure-avoidant type of attachment are the most stressed of all, they will not change their exploratory behavior when the separation comes from the mother, in fact they seem indifferent to this separation and will even go so far as to ignore their mother when she comes back. Finally, children with an ambivalent-resistant insecure attachment style will simply deactivate their attachment system when they find themselves in a situation of distress.
Nina : Through this experience, we were able to highlight the importance for children of having an attachment figure from an early age. From this observation, it was shown that some children did not fit into any of these categories. So in 1988, Main and Solomon created a fourth type of attachment which they called the insecure disorganized-disoriented attachment. These children do not seem to have succeeded in developing coherent situations to deal with parents’ responses to their need for reassurance, so they will have problematic behaviors such as hitting themselves or their parents, or staying frozen. when returning the attachment figure.
Jeanne : Studies have indeed shown that what explained the development of this quality of attachment in the child was behaviors, dysfunctional from the parents, which could scare the child or on the contrary reveal a certain fear or fragility from the parent who does not know how to behave towards the child.
Nina : As they grow up, these children will try to control the relationship they have with their parents in order to protect themselves from it. They will thus develop either a punitive strategy by being violent towards their parents, or a care strategy by taking care of them hoping that the parents will no longer be violent towards them. I think by now we have said everything about it, Jeanne, do you have anything to add eventually?
Jeanne : No Nina, I think we’ve covered the main points of this concept of mother-child attachment. If you ever have a question while listening to this podcast, please post it on the forum so that we can answer to you. Thank you all for listening. In next week’s podcast, we’ll cover the topic of animal mediation. Have a nice day !.