Читать книгу Lifespan Development - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 329

Attachment patterns tend to be stable over infancy and early childhood, especially when securely attached infants receive continuous responsive care (Ding, Xu, Wang, Li, & Wang, 2014; Marvin, Britner, & Russell, 2016). The continuity of care influences the stability of attachment. For example, negative experiences can disrupt secure attachment. The loss of a parent, parental divorce, a parent’s psychiatric disorder, and physical abuse, as well as changes in family stressors, adaptive processes, and living conditions, can transform a secure attachment into an insecure attachment pattern later in childhood or adolescence (Feeney & Monin, 2016; Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 2016).

Contextual factors such as low SES, family and community stressors, and the availability of supports influence the stability of attachment through their effect on parents’ emotional and physical resources and the quality of parent–infant interactions. (Booth-LaForce et al., 2014; Thompson, 2016; Van Ryzin, Carlson, & Sroufe, 2011). Securely attached infants reared in contexts that pose risks to development are at risk to develop insecure attachments, whereas risky contexts tend to stabilize insecure attachment over time (Pinquart, Feußner, & Ahnert, 2013). An insecure attachment between child and parent can be overcome by changing maladaptive interaction patterns, increasing sensitivity on the part of the parent, and fostering consistent and developmentally appropriate responses to children’s behaviors. Pediatricians, counselors, and social workers can help parents identify and change ineffective parenting behaviors to improve parent–child interaction patterns.

Although most research on attachment has focused on the mother–infant bond, we know that infants form multiple attachments (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018). Consider the Efe foragers of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which infants are cared for by many people, as adults’ availability varies with their hunting and gathering duties (Morelli, 2015). Efe infants experience frequent changes in residence and camp, exposure to many adults, and frequent interactions with multiple caregivers. It is estimated that the Efe infant will typically come into contact with 9 to 14 and as many as 20 people within a 2-hour period. Efe infants are reared in an intensely social community and develop many trusting relationships—many attachments to many people (Morelli, 2015). On a smaller scale, Western infants also develop multiple attachments to mothers, fathers, family members, and caregivers. Multiple attachment relationships offer important developmental opportunities. For example, an infant’s secure attachment relationship with a father can compensate for the negative effects of an insecure attachment to a mother (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018; Grazyna Kochanska & Kim, 2013; Oldt et al., 2014). It is important that infants develop attachments with some caregivers—but which caregivers, whether mothers, fathers, or other responsive adults, matters less than the bond itself. Many infants are cared for by multiple adults in child care settings. The accompanying Applied Developmental Science feature discusses how the quality of infant child care affects developmental outcomes.