Tamis-LeMonda-05-14-2021-7

272  CHAPTER 7

Contexts of Attachment Ethological theorists such as Bowlby and Harlow underscore the universal adaptiveness of attachment. At the same time, Ainsworth and other research- ers found that infants vary considerably in the ways they express attachment. What contextual factors explain differences among infants? Most centrally, infant attachment depends primarily on the sensitivity of caregivers. Fur- thermore, caregivers from different cultural communities share unique views and practices around childrearing that affect their infants’ development and expression of attachment. Parenting Context of Attachment LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.17  Identify the features of high-quality parent-infant interactions that relate to infant attachment. Ainsworth underscored parents’ formative role in infant attachment. Her in-depth observations of infants and mothers in their home environments revealed critical differences between mothers of secure and insecure infants. Mothers of securely attached infants quickly picked up their crying infants, held them longer andwith noticeable pleasure, and responded sensitively to the infants’ behaviors in general (Ainsworth & Bell, 1969). By contrast, mothers of avoidant and resistant children spent little time holding their babies and were unresponsive to the infants’ crying and developmental changes. As a result, when securely attached infants reached a year, they did not cry as much or need as much physical contact as avoidant or resistant infants (Ainsworth, 1979). Ainsworth’s conclusion that caregivers should respond quickly and con- sistently to infants’ cries in the early months flew in the face of contemporary thinking. Many worried that such attention would result in spoiled children or crybabies. However, Ainsworth’s revolutionary position has since stood the test of time. Researchers today acknowledge the central role of sensitive parenting for infants’ strong and secure attachment, and recognize that con- textual factors influence parents’ sensitivity (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2020; Leerkes, Gedaly, & Su, 2016). For example, being a single mother with low education, living in poverty, and having an uninvolved partner heightens the risk of low maternal sensitivity, which can cascade to resistant and avoidant attachment in the infant (Leerkes, Parade, & Gudmundson, 2011; Leerkes, Weaver, & O’Brien, 2012). Furthermore, mothers who fail to remain calm behaviorally and physiologically when their infants cry have infants with disorganized attachments and behavior problems (Leerkes et al., 2017). CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING 7.17 1. How does the quality of parent-infant interaction shape infants’ attachment development? 2. What can caregivers do to foster secure attachment in their infants? Cultural Context of Attachment LEARNING OBJECTIVE 7.18  Relate the ways that infants’ attachment with caregivers is similar and different across cultural communities. Many features of attachment generalize across cultures, which makes sense given the evolutionary roots of attachment. Infants around the world form attachments and actively attempt to remain close to their caregivers (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2020; van Ijzendoorn & Sagi, 2010). Children from different cultural communities, including the United States, Israeli Kibbutzim, and

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