Why are relationships important? Why should we study relationships scientifically?
As children form attachments with their caretakers, they start to establish a working model of relationships. They slowly learn how relationships form, as well as how much warmth and security relationships provide. Early child- parent attachments can be seen in the “strange situation” experiment where an infant’s reaction is observed after the mother leaves the child in a room with a stranger and then moment’s later returns to the room. Ainsworth was able to measure infant’s attachment styles to their caregivers. (A) A mother and infant enter an unknown room filled with games. While the infant looks around the room and plays with the toys, …show more content…
Secure people find it easy to get close to others and are comfortable depending on others and others depending on them. They don’t have a fear being abandoned or about someone getting too close. Anxious- avoidant people are uncomfortable being close, they find it difficult to trust others, and they can’t fully depend on others. They get anxious when someone gets too close, and their partner wants them to be more intimate then they are comfortable with. Lastly, anxious ambivalent get too close to others and they worry their partner doesn’t really love them or won’t stay with them. They want to merge completely with another person, and this impulse sometimes drives others …show more content…
The bonds the children living in foster care form with their temporary caregivers has the ability to either impair or change the previous patterns of attachment the child had with their original caregivers. In foster care, children need to go through losses and previous traumatic events. An adequate and loving caregiver provide a warm base for the child. During the late 1990’s, Smyke, Dumitrescu and Zeanah conducted a study in a Romanian institution with three groups: (a) a ‘typical’ unit; (b) a pilot unit with fewer adults caring for each child, giving greater stability in care; and (c) a control group of never institutionalized children. Results indicated drastic higher rates of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) in children in the typical unit versus the other two groups. Also, children described as ‘their favorite’ by a caretaker had lower rates of attachment disorders. The variety of the different attachment styles in children living in institutions have been shown to have lower rates of secure and higher rates of unsystematic attachment than children living with their biological parents. Numbers show large differences amongst studies, the mean rate of secure attachment was 26 % (median = 25.9, range 0–47 %),