The main purpose of the current paper is to summarize an article by Barry H. Schneider, Leslie Atkinson and Christine Tardif, which is aimed to analyze and describe the attachment theory. The article was published in “Developmental Psychology” journal under the name “Child–Parent Attachment and Children’s Peer Relations: A Quantitative Review”.
The core background of the attachment theory is the fact that the safety of the child-parent bond during the early stages of child-parent relationships affects the child’s relationships with his/her parents and society during the life span. Such correlation has been proved by more than 60 different studies and researches that had registered the influence of child-parent attachment on child’s peer relations. The results for such relations have been evaluated according to the effect size for child-parent attachment. It also should be noted that the majority of these studies have been focused on child-mother attachment, in particular. Respectively, number of studies devoted to child-father attachment was not considerable enough in order to get adequate conclusions about this type of child-parent attachment. In addition, cultural and gender differences of the families did not affect the ESs considerably. As for the ES for child-mother attachment, it was relatively homogeneous and ranged in small-to-moderate diapasons. In addition, ESs did not change considerably in the studies that performed Q-sort and Strange Situation methods. The ESs were more considerable for peer relations in adolescence and middle childhood compared to the same of early childhood. The effects were also larger for researches that focused more on child’s close contacts and friendships compared to the same that focused on communication with other peers.
The article provides various meanings of different scholars that researched the attachment theory. For example, Bowlby (1969) offered a model, which assumed that a child creates various models of the outside surrounding with respective models of people in it and his/her own place in it. Through years, such states of mind tend to guide child’s behavior and become more complicated and sophisticated with the development of the child. Eventually, these models are projected onto the child’s social life and his/her social world, as well. Consequently, the infant tends to predict the reactions of the people around based on these models. Nevertheless, despite the fact that such internal models are potentially amendable in order to adapt to the social changes, they are not being changed easily. The main reason for such difficulty of change is that the expectancies and experiences according to these models become conservative, being layered through the course of child’s life. In addition, these expectancies include reactions towards the confirmation or absence of disconfirmation. Therefore, the attachment theory is being explained as a difficulty to change the infant’s behavior according to the changes in the relationships with his/her parents through the years of child’s development.
Nevertheless, the article has included several studies that have questioned and criticized such attitude towards the attachment theory. For example, Grusec and Lytton (1988) attempted to assume that the attachment is the causal reaction. They claimed that attachment is a result of child’s elasticity and ability to change, which may also have various sources. In addition, Hinde (1988) stated that not only the internal working models described above affect the child’s attachment, as he claimed that there is a variety of non-attachment factors may cause higher ability for attachment, including child’s personality and temperament. Hinde also has shown that there is no clear evidence for the causal role’s existence and for its association with the internal working models. Furthermore, Lewis and Feiring (1989) stated that the psychologists failed to take the influential social factors in consideration, as not only parents and their attitude towards their children affect the children’s attachment.
As there is such a controversy in the discussion of children’s attachment, the article attempted to conduct a quantitative research of the issue. The author considers the quantitative study the most objective comparison of the results received in the studies mentioned above. In addition, for the adequateness of the research, the common metric for the quantitative analysis has been used. However, in order to include the maximum possible variations of the results, the article discusses the results of the quantitative research in the context of the relevant theories and hypothesis devoted to the topic.
Therefore, summarizing everything that was mentioned before, it should be stated that the research offered in the current article describes the attachment theory from various aspects, using different theoretical and practical methods in order to get the most adequate and balanced results.
References
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. New York: Basic Books.
Grusec, J., & Lytton, H. (1988). Social development. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Lewis, M., & Feiring, C. (1989). Infant, Mother, and Mother-Infant Interaction Behavior and Subsequent Attachment. Child Development, 60(4), 831. doi:10.2307/1131024
Hinde, R. A. (1988). Continuities and discontinuities: Conceptual issues and methodological considerations. In M. Rutter (Ed.), Studies of psychosocial risk: The power of longitudinal data (pp. 95–122). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
