AP Psych: Attachment & Parenting

Attachment

deep and enduring emotional bond with caregiver

Stranger Anxiety

Distress children experience when exposed to people unfamiliar to them approx. 8 months

Harlow’s Experiment

Harlow sought to find if infants bond with surrogate mothers because of bodily contact or nourishment, discovered it was because of bodily contact and feelings of care

Body Contact/Contact Comfort

physical comfort, not nourishment in the formation of attachment

Mary Ainsworth

experimented on children’s attachment to caregivers

Secure attachment

most desired, confidently explore while caregiver is present but calms down and comes to parents when caregiver returns

Avoidant attachment

seeks little contact with parent and shows little distress when parent leaves

Anxious/Ambivalent attachment

displays anxiety even when mother is near

Parenting

Baumrind

Authoritarian

• High behavior standards

• strict punishment of misconduct

• little communication

• Unsupportive, Demanding

Permissive

• high nurturance

• little guidance, discipline, or control

• few demands

• Supportive, Undemanding

Authoritative

• confrontative

• sets limits but listens

• flexible

• Supportive, Demanding

Uninvolved/Neglectful

• Indifference

• unaware of what happens in child’s life

• Unsupporting, Undemanding