Attachment is a deep, emotional bond formed between two individuals, especially the child and his/her caregiver. John Bowlby, a British psychologist, proposed the attachment theory to explain how these bonds form between an infant and a caregiver. According to Bowlby, a child’s attachment behavior evolves with time to ensure that they would successfully remain under their caregiver’s protection for survival. He specified four phases of child-caregiver attachment development: Phase 1 : 0-3 months Phase 2 : 3-6 months Phase 3 : 6 months to 3 years Phase 4 : 3 years through the end of childhood.
While Bowlby noted that children exhibited individual differences in attachment, Mary Ainsworth studied the effect of infant-parent separation. This established a better understanding of the individual differences in the attachment pattern. According to Ainsworth, the three attachment patterns are:…
