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Abstract
Babies and toddlers will have their attachment seeking response activated in the absence of the primary or a secondary attachment figure when they are in the presence of a stranger and in unfamiliar surroundings. Between the ages of about 6 months and 30 months, babies and toddlers can only terminate their attachment seeking response by reaching proximity to an attachment figure, and unless this can be achieved their attachment seeking response will remain unterminated. This is the experience of many babies and toddlers each day during certain forms of non-parental daycare. Day-care without access to a secondary attachment figure is more likely to be the case in group settings such as day-nurseries, than when care is provided by an individual carer such as a childminder, nanny, or grandmother, who is more likely to be a secondary attachment figure. This paper discusses the likelihood of babies and toddlers being able to terminate their attachment seeking response during different forms of non-parental daycare, and discusses some of the psychological defence processes (including dissociation), that may be activated when the attachment seeking response remains unterminated throughout the day.
This paper briefly examines a model of non-parental daycare that actively promotes and monitors long-term secondary attachment bonds between baby and carer.
Notes
1 There is a tendency to focus on the most recent or obvious risk factor in a child's history and attribute a disproportionate significance to it. Children's capacity to tolerate one or two modest risk factors will often mean the risks go undetected, and the most recent experience is then singled out as the sole cause.
2 Babies' instinct to de-activate their attachment seeking response under stress in the absence of an attachment figure was probably an evolutionary adaptation that reduced the risk of detection by predators.
3 I'd like this opportunity to clarify a few points. Parents may want to encourage their babies' and toddlers' cognitive skills, and be tempted to start pushing their education very young, focusing rewards mainly on achievements. Toddlers who feel they have to earn approval may become diligent students but emotionally rather withdrawn, and others, especially boys, who find personal relationships difficult may become preoccupied with various forms of solitary home-entertainment. There is a tendency for babies to form a similar quality of attachment with their parents, as the parents had when they were babies. It comes naturally to parent the way we were parented, it does not come naturally to do it differently. When searching for the origins of children's emotional problems, there is a great temptation to assume that the discovery of a link between a cause and an effect is proof of a genuine correlation. A problem faced by many researchers is sample bias. For example, higher quality daycare providers are more likely to take part in studies of child development than are lower quality, or unregistered providers. I avoid using the term “separation anxiety,” because it's now being used to describe an entire spectrum of childhood behaviours ranging from mild protest when a baby tries to follow an attachment figure into another room, right through to the traumatic effects of months in institutional care. Another confusion is that since attachment seeking and protest are natural responses to separation, some people think separation cannot be traumatic because the response is a natural one. Some parents have the mistaken belief that their 6-month-old baby has become over-dependent on them, and that this can be “corrected” by leaving the baby in a supervised group without having one of their attachment figures present.
4 I have been a patron of The Soho Family Centre since 2003. The Centre has been providing attachment-based daycare since 1986.