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Attachment theory suggests that adolescents attach naturally to their parents as a way of survival and security. Attachment theory can be traced back to Bowlby and Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall. The focus in the beginning was solely on the development of infants. This theory is now a more developed theory that centers around multiple interpersonal relationships. The four internal working models that the book discusses are secure, ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized. Secure attachment is when a child or adolescent feels most comfortable when around their parents. Secure attachment is also described as “autonomous” (Gavazzi, 2011, p.51). Ambivalent attachment is also known as an insecure attachment style. During ambivalent attachment, a child or adolescent may cling to their parents out of fear. Avoidant attachment is an “independent” attachment style. During the Avoidant attachment style, the child or adolescent may appear to not have any issues when their parent leaves out of the room. Disorganized attachment is a result of how inconsistent a parent may be. For adulthood, a secure attachment style appears to be the most effective in building relationships. With a secure attachment style, the adult is more likely to have independence while also being able to work well with others. The ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized attachment theories tend to result in individuals feeling as though they are lacking in different areas due to how they were parented. Attachment theory is a useful resource for researchers who focus on the relationships between adults and adolescents. This theory answers a lot of the “why” questions that may appear within these types of relationships (Gavazzi, 2011).

Resource

Gavazzi, S. M. (2011). Families with adolescents: Bridging the gaps between theory, research, and practice. New
York, NY: Springer.

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Attachment theory focuses on relationships and bonds (particularly long-term) between people, including those between a parent and child and between romantic partners. It is a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people.

This theory suggests that people are born with a need to forge bonds with caregivers as children. These early bonds may continue to have an influence on attachments throughout life.

History of the Attachment Theory

British psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist. He described attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Bowlby was interested in understanding the anxiety and distress that children experience when separated from their primary caregivers.

Thinkers like Freud suggested that infants become attached to the source of pleasure. Infants, who are in the oral stage of development, become attached to their mothers because she fulfills their oral needs.

Some of the earliest behavioral theories suggested that attachment was simply a learned behavior. These theories proposed that attachment was merely the result of the feeding relationship between the child and the caregiver. Because the caregiver feeds the child and provides nourishment, the child becomes attached.

Bowlby observed that feedings did not diminish separation anxiety. Instead, he found that attachment was characterized by clear behavioral and motivation patterns. When children are frightened, they seek proximity from their primary caregiver in order to receive both comfort and care.

Understanding Attachment

Attachment is an emotional bond with another person. Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. He suggested that attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the child's chances of survival.

Bowlby viewed attachment as a product of evolutionary processes. While the behavioral theories of attachment suggested that attachment was a learned process, Bowlby and others proposed that children are born with an innate drive to form attachments with caregivers.

Throughout history, children who maintained proximity to an attachment figure were more likely to receive comfort and protection, and therefore more likely to survive to adulthood. Through the process of natural selection, a motivational system designed to regulate attachment emerged.

The central theme of attachment theory is that primary caregivers who are available and responsive to an infant's needs allow the child to develop a sense of security. The infant learns that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world.

So what determines successful attachment? Behaviorists suggest that it was food that led to forming this attachment behavior, but Bowlby and others demonstrated that nurturance and responsiveness were the primary determinants of attachment.

Ainsworth's "Strange Situation"

In her research in the 1970s, psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded greatly upon Bowlby's original work. Her groundbreaking "strange situation" study revealed the profound effects of attachment on behavior. In the study, researchers observed children between the ages of 12 and 18 months as they responded to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mothers.

Based on the responses the researchers observed, Ainsworth described three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant-insecure attachment. Later, researchers Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth attachment style called disorganized-insecure attachment based on their own research.

A number of studies since that time have supported Ainsworth's attachment styles and have indicated that attachment styles also have an impact on behaviors later in life.

Maternal Deprivation Studies

Harry Harlow's infamous studies on maternal deprivation and social isolation during the 1950s and 1960s also explored early bonds. In a series of experiments, Harlow demonstrated how such bonds emerge and the powerful impact they have on behavior and functioning.﻿﻿

In one version of his experiment, newborn rhesus monkeys were separated from their birth mothers and reared by surrogate mothers. The infant monkeys were placed in cages with two wire-monkey mothers. One of the wire monkeys held a bottle from which the infant monkey could obtain nourishment, while the other wire monkey was covered with a soft terry cloth.

While the infant monkeys would go to the wire mother to obtain food, they spent most of their days with the soft cloth mother. When frightened, the baby monkeys would turn to their cloth-covered mother for comfort and security.

Harlow's work also demonstrated that early attachments were the result of receiving comfort and care from a caregiver rather than simply the result of being fed.

The Stages of Attachment

Researchers Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson analyzed the number of attachment relationships that infants form in a longitudinal study with 60 infants. The infants were observed every four weeks during the first year of life, and then once again at 18 months.

Based on their observations, Schaffer and Emerson outlined four distinct phases of attachment, including:

Pre-Attachment Stage

From birth to 3 months, infants do not show any particular attachment to a specific caregiver. The infant's signals, such as crying and fussing, naturally attract the attention of the caregiver and the baby's positive responses encourage the caregiver to remain close.

Indiscriminate Attachment

Between 6 weeks of age to 7 months, infants begin to show preferences for primary and secondary caregivers. Infants develop trust that the caregiver will respond to their needs. While they still accept care from others, infants start distinguishing between familiar and unfamiliar people, responding more positively to the primary caregiver.

Discriminate Attachment

At this point, from about 7 to 11 months of age, infants show a strong attachment and preference for one specific individual. They will protest when separated from the primary attachment figure (separation anxiety), and begin to display anxiety around strangers (stranger anxiety).

Multiple Attachments

After approximately 9 months of age, children begin to form strong emotional bonds with other caregivers beyond the primary attachment figure. This often includes a second parent, older siblings, and grandparents.

Factors That Influence Attachment

While this process may seem straightforward, there are some factors that can influence how and when attachments develop, including:

Opportunity for attachment: Children who do not have a primary care figure, such as those raised in orphanages, may fail to develop the sense of trust needed to form an attachment.

Quality caregiving: When caregivers respond quickly and consistently, children learn that they can depend on the people who are responsible for their care, which is the essential foundation for attachment. This is a vital factor.

Attachment Styles

There are four patterns of attachment, including:

Ambivalent attachment: These children become very distressed when a parent leaves. Ambivalent attachment style is considered uncommon, affecting an estimated 7% to 15% of U.S. children. As a result of poor parental availability, these children cannot depend on their primary caregiver to be there when they need them.

Avoidant attachment:Children with an avoidant attachment tend to avoid parents or caregivers, showing no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger. This attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future.

Disorganized attachment: These children display a confusing mix of behavior, seeming disoriented, dazed, or confused. They may avoid or resist the parent. Lack of a clear attachment pattern is likely linked to inconsistent caregiver behavior. In such cases, parents may serve as both a source of comfort and fear, leading to disorganized behavior.

Secure attachment: Children who can depend on their caregivers show distress when separated and joy when reunited. Although the child may be upset, they feel assured that the caregiver will return. When frightened, securely attached children are comfortable seeking reassurance from caregivers. This is the most common attachment style.

The Lasting Impact of Early Attachment

Children who are securely attached as infants tend to develop stronger self-esteem and better self-reliance as they grow older. These children also tend to be more independent, perform better in school, have successful social relationships, and experience less depression and anxiety.

Research suggests that failure to form secure attachments early in life can have a negative impact on behavior in later childhood and throughout life.

Children diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD), or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently display attachment problems, possibly due to early abuse, neglect, or trauma. Children adopted after the age of 6 months may have a higher risk of attachment problems.

Attachment Disorders

In some cases, children may also develop attachment disorders. There are two attachment disorders that may occur: reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED).

Reactive attachment disorder occurs when children do not form healthy bonds with caregivers. This is often the result of early childhood neglect or abuse and results in problems with emotional management and patterns of withdrawal from caregivers.

Disinhibited social engagement disorder affects a child's ability to form bonds with others and often results from trauma, abandonment, abuse, or neglect. It is characterized by a lack of inhibition around strangers, often leading to excessively familiar behaviors around people they don't know and a lack of social boundaries.

Adult Attachments

Although attachment styles displayed in adulthood are not necessarily the same as those seen in infancy, early attachments can have a serious impact on later relationships. Adults who were securely attached in childhood tend to have good self-esteem, strong romantic relationships, and the ability to self-disclose to others.

A Word From Verywell

Our understanding of attachment theory is heavily influenced by the early work of researchers such as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Today, researchers recognize that the early relationships children have with their caregivers play a critical role in healthy development.

Such bonds can also have an influence on romantic relationships in adulthood. Understanding your attachment style may help you look for ways to become more secure in your relationships.

Additional Reading

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Attachment theory is centered on the emotional bonds between people and suggests that our earliest attachments can leave a lasting mark on our lives.

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Credit...Shuhua Xiong

Over a decade after its publication, one book on dating has people firmly in its grip.

Credit...Shuhua Xiong

Published Nov. 6, 2021 Updated Nov. 10, 2021

Most articles don’t, for good reason, start with “My therapist said….”

And yet: That’s exactly where this story begins.

“Have you ever heard of attachment theory and adult attachment styles?” asked my very own therapist in a session earlier this year.

Oh, I definitely had. A few years ago, a high-octane romance suddenly exploded in spectacular fashion, out of nowhere. One of us shut down. The other spiraled. In the immediate blast radius, for both parties, it was as heartbreaking as it was indecipherable.

The result? Revelatory. Not for what I learned about them, but for what I discovered about myself, my own contribution to this romantic meltdown, and one thing or another about pretty much all the relationships that came before it. To say it changed the way I view (let alone operate in) romance since then would be a vast understatement.

So “yeah, of course,” I told my therapist, like she asked me about FM radio. “I’ve read ‘Attached.’ What about it?” I went on to describe the various attachment styles the book describes, characterized my own, and explained how I’ve seen it reflected throughout my life.

It takes a lot to surprise a therapist. But for the briefest of moments, my therapist was stunned: not because familiarity with this book and its contents made me unique, but just the opposite. She’s been recommending “Attached” for the last eight years, and I was just the latest in a new, recent stream of patients who got to this book well before she could push it on me.

The ‘Eureka’ Moment

Published in December 2010, “Attached” sounds, superficially, like so many other schmaltzy self-help tomes that came before it (“Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” “He’s Just Not That Into You,” “The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right,” et al).

But “Attached” is built on a key differentiator: the social science underlying its upshot, starting with attachment theory, the well-established thesis of psychology dating back to the mid-20th century dealing in children’s bonds with caregivers.

One of the authors of the book, Dr. Amir Levine — a clinical psychiatrist and molecular neuroscience researcher at Columbia University — was working in a program using “attachment-guided therapy” to bond mothers and children when he stumbled into research he’d never seen before.

The research, conducted by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver, showed adults’ relationships in romantic settings as similar to the styles of children’s attachments to parents.

Dr. Levine’s “eureka” moment came not long after, when he imagined that, if this research could be practically applied to adults’ love lives, its implications — that one can (theoretically) learn how to better understand romantic partners or choose romantic partners or cope with the behaviors of a romantic partner — could be significant. Paradigm-shifting, even.

He reached out to a longtime friend, psychologist and writer, Rachel Heller. He explained his revelation, and his ambition to explain this science to laypeople to help change their lives, but needed help packaging it into a digestible, actionable book that wasn’t just a bunch of research citations. Ms. Heller agreed, they wrote the book together, and sold it through an agent.

To many, many people: They were on to something.

What’s Your Type?

The book lays out the three primary adult attachment styles, which, like those of children, are: anxious, avoidant or secure. Our attachment styles reveal themselves in romantic, emotionally intimate situations — for example, during a fight, a breakup, or that precarious, weird moment when a relationship goes from casual dating to a serious prospect. In these situations, people with anxious attachment styles can instinctively crave emotional intimacy, and can become frenetically preoccupied with love and their ability to have, or lose, it (see: the aforementioned spinning out).

People with avoidant attachment styles tend to reflexively align this intimacy with losing independence and being suffocated, shutting down or pushing it away (again, see: the aforementioned shutting down).

And those with secure attachment styles don’t feel threatened or spun out by romantic intimacy — they communicate warmly, and honestly.

Everyone more or less falls into one of these three categories: according to Dr. Hazan and Dr. Shaver’s research, their subjects were about 56 percent secure, 20 percent anxious/ambivalent, 23 percent avoidant and 3 to 5 percent in a “disorganized” category (where participants vacillate between two distinct styles). These styles affected the way we deal with relationship conflicts, our feelings toward sex, our expectations in romantic intimacy and everything in between.

“It was interesting,” my therapist later told me, “because at the time, I noticed many of my patients over the last couple months were not only familiar with the book and the context, but some of the terms: avoidant and secure and anxious.”

It wasn’t just her noticing the uptick. In the three years since I read it, I saw the book more and more often on other people’s bookshelves, had more conversations about it, even overheard more conversations about it.

When I asked around about acquaintances’ familiarity with the book, the following responded, excitedly, that they’ve read it: My hairdresser (and her roommate), four exes, a newly married friend’s wife, a best friend’s new girlfriend, a former roommate, an old summer camp friend, four former colleagues (one of whom called it “the most important book I’ve ever read”) and a friend from high school I haven’t seen in over a decade. And those were just the people I knew.

In 2021, “Attached” is a top-ranked book on Amazon under the “Social Science,” “Cognitive Psychology” and “Love and Romance” categories. It’s in Amazon’s Top 200 books currently. It’s been translated into 20 languages, and is the rare book that sells an increasing number of copies year to year since its release.

The Pandemic + TikTok Effect?

Not long after the conversation with my therapist, I started cobbling together a theory of my own: “Attached” exploded in popularity around the start of the pandemic as single people wondered if they’d be alone the next time the world felt as if it was ending. It also, I imagined, appealed to couples who were watching their relationships crumble under the pressure cooker of the first wave of lockdown.

Lee Robinson, a 29-year-old comedian from Colorado, was one of those who worried about being alone. She had a relationship end a few months before the pandemic. She was in lockdown by herself, started hearing about attachment styles that spring, and read the book later during the summer, after it was recommended ad nauseam by multiple friends. Her reaction?

“It clicked,” she said. “I was able to kind of look at old relationships with a new lens.” And now, she joked, “within the queer community, it’s accepted knowledge — our version of the Bible.”

The book’s prominence is such that at this point, among her friends, it’s coming up within the first three dates: “Get in the water! Are you even going to be serious with someone if you’re not talking about attachment styles?” she said, laughing.

She, too, had brought it up to her therapist — not the other way around. And of course, on her recommendation, her roommate read it as well.

Sure enough: The book industry database Bookscan shows “Attached” experiencing a hockey-stick-like surge in sales, leaping from about 62,000 hard copies (not counting e-reader or audio versions) sold in the United States in 2019 to over 82,000 in 2020. This year, as of the end of October, about 102,300 copies have been sold.

Megan Newman, the vice president and publisher of TarcherPerigee — which, in addition to “Attached,” also published “The Artist’s Way” and “Atomic Habits,” two other books that have transcended the “self help” label into pop ubiquity — said it’s remarkable that sales have risen when the authors do little press and there has been little in the way of concentrated advertising and marketing efforts. She attributes much of its success to word of mouth.

“The other thing,” she added, “is the rise of TikTok.”

It’s hard not to find something substantiating a trend on a social network, but the over 189 million views attributed to #AttachmentStyle TikTok (or the over 72 million views attributed to #AttachmentTheory) are far from inconsequential. From therapists explaining what the various attachment styles are, to millennials acting out previous relationships falling to anxious/avoidant conflicts, there’s plenty there to consume.

What you won’t find much of are criticisms of the book — which do, in fact, exist.

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Credit...Shuhua Xiong

Don’t Quit Therapy Yet

Even though my therapist believes the book is “excellent,” she sees it as a broad tool that should be used within the context of therapy (she admits that she’s biased).

While the book offers a test to assess one’s own attachment style, she pointed out that people can get self-assessments wrong (hence, uh, the therapy profession), to say nothing of assessing others’ styles, and even more, being unable to differentiate between someone’s personality (they just don’t like to text) and the amateur pathologizing of their attachment style (“they’re avoidant”).

People who aren’t mental health professionals, she explained, don’t have the training to “understand all of the other biopsychosocial influences” that comprise a person.

This gets at the root of one of the primary knocks against the book, from its critics: Its view toward intimacy issues is often tilted at finding partners who suit one’s own attachment style — either one that matches, or someone with a secure attachment style — rather than mending relationships between two conflicting attachment styles, which the book dedicates some real estate to, but not a ton.

Other critics, like Rob Weisskirch, a professor of Human Development at California State University, Monterey Bay, question the larger paradigm of adult attachment theory. Dr. Weisskirch hasn’t read the book but believes the theory is limiting because it demonstrates only four types of ways people relate in relationships.

He also pointed out that the ultimate goal with attachment theory is often “thinking about long-term partnership. But that’s kind of an old notion, to think that everyone’s going to be in a long-term relationship. Because there are some people who are very happy not being in long term relationship.”

Alexis Hyde, the director of the Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles, hasn’t read the book either, nor will she stock it in the museum’s bookstore.

“As somebody who’s in the business of them, I find broken relationships — and the things that occur that create them — to be incredibly nuanced,” she said. “There’s a lot more causes than just: These are four types of attachment styles. And this is just the way it’s been described to me. I don’t want to engage with this kind of discourse. The self-identifying as an anxious attachment type or an avoidant attachment type, or labeling someone else — those words become insurmountable. You’re creating these barriers of: I can’t get out of this.”

Her sense is that people will say “‘I’m avoidant, guess I’m never going to have a relationship.’ ‘I’m anxious. So I’m, I’m texting him too much, and that’s why he doesn’t like me.’ Those kinds of words have power.”

Even the Author Is Surprised

Another critique is that the book flattens nuance out of some very complicated ideas, and that its success is owed to part of a larger trend of people overeager to reduce themselves or others to a single style (see: Myers-Briggs tests, Enneagram typing, Zodiac signs). They do this, goes the critique, in order to further pronounce their own identity, rather than realizing that our behavior and attachment styles (and thus, our identities) aren’t so precisely fixed, or attributable to just one single thing.

“There is a spectrum,” Dr. Levine said when I spoke to him in September. “But what the research finds is that there is a predominant characteristic that you can find yourself gravitating toward more. And I think that’s helpful to know.”

As for the critique of the book needing to be read in therapy? He agreed that this would be ideal, but contended that while not everyone has access to therapy, most people have access to a library, and something is better than nothing. He also agreed that the book attempts to negotiate the fine line between being a wonkish academic treatise, and being over-distilled — and it may not always succeed to people’s tastes on either side.

In our interview, given that he had just been read a series of pitches against his life’s work he’s no doubt heard time and time again, Dr. Levine was a remarkably good sport. This may have something to do with that fact that he’s not some globe-trotting, TED-talking, Oprah-approved sage-on-a-stage celebrity love guru, but instead, a sheepish, shy, sweetly enthusiastic Columbia academic, who spends most of his days seeing patients, conducting research, writing and talking about neural-developmental pathologies.

While he foresaw a rise in sales during the pandemic, Dr. Levine remains as mystified at the book’s success over the last decade as anyone else. “I don’t think I still fully realize it,” he said, laughing. And no, he knew nothing about #AttachmentStyle TikTok.

He even conceded what he would do differently if he wrote it now, which is to emphasize the need for empathy toward avoidant attachment styles, who suffer as much (if not, in many ways, more so) than those with anxious attachment styles. Their instinctive aversion to intimacy can translate to more broken relationships with people they genuinely love, and thus, more loneliness, despite deeply desiring companionship.

Remarkably, when he talks about writing the book, he sounds … exactly like nearly everyone who’s ever read it.

At the time he came across the research that would form the basis of the book, he was going through a breakup (he’s in a relationship now). What he learned “really helped me so much to understand everything that was going on in that breakup. It was really an eye-opening experience.”

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Over a decade after its publication, one book on dating has people firmly in its grip.

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The Attachment Theory: How Childhood Affects Life

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The article's dates listed inside are of the 90s, but it was published in 2024.

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Question #1: What attachment style(s) did you have with your parents growing up? Also, what attachment style(s) do you and your child(ren) share?

Question #2: Which attachment style do you believe could be most beneficial as an adult? Which style do you believe could be the least beneficial for adulthood?