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

• 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

  • calmed 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