Child Secure Attachment Essay

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Recommended: Parental Models of Attachment

Introduction: The topic of interest for this paper the attachments that one child will have in comparison to his or her sibling(s). Attachment is a key part in the development of a child as it affects the child’s emotional development and decisions in life. With a study done by Mary Ainsworth, three main attachment styles were identified as Secure Attachment, Avoidant Attachment, and Resistant Attachment. There is a critical period of time in which the parents can make an attachment with their children. A strong secure attachment is extremely important for the future outcome of a child and thus it’s important to research further into this topic. It is clear that environmental factors such as the mother’s treatment towards the child will impact …show more content…

Research of attachments in siblings and how gender impacts differences can help shed light on possible biological components in the creation of attachments.
Summary: Researchers from Pennsylvania State University, Leiden University, and University of Western Ontario tested large samples of sibling pairs and put their data together in order to determine the differences in attachment using the Strange Situation Procedure. The Strange Situation Procedure is completed by having the mother and child enter an unfamiliar room to play in, a stranger approaching the baby to play with him or her, and the mother leaving the room. The resulting reactions of the babies will be recorded and categorized. This was a test originally used by Mary Ainsworth to explore the three main styles of attachment. The hypothesis of this experiment was that the attachment relationships of the siblings would be similar and be even more similar between identical twins. Some operational definitions were that the siblings are between 12 …show more content…

This shows that there is definitely a genetic component when it comes to attachment, such that two brothers may have a much similar attachment to their parents than a sister and a brother. As maternal sensitivity is stable for the years that the experiment was carried through the concordance of the attachments were also much more

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