Parenting & Attachment (College Board AP® Psychology): Revision Note

Parenting styles

• Research has identified distinct parenting styles

  • These are consistent patterns of parenting behaviors that reflect different approaches to discipline, warmth, and expectations

• Three main parenting styles have been identified:

• Cultural differences exist in how parenting styles affect outcomes

  • Authoritarian parenting is associated with poorer outcomes in some Western samples

  • Authoritarian parenting produces different outcomes in some East Asian and African American families, where it may be associated with high academic achievement

• This demonstrates that parenting style cannot be evaluated independently of cultural context

Attachment theory

• Attachment is the strong emotional bond that forms between an infant and their primary caregiver

  • Attachment serves as the foundation for social and emotional development across the lifespan

• John Bowlby proposed that attachment is innate and evolved as a survival mechanism:

  • Infants are born with social releasers

    • These are innate behaviors that trigger caregiving responses in adults and facilitate bond formation, e.g. smiling, cooing, gripping

  • Bowlby proposed a critical period for attachment formation

    • This is approximately 3 to 6 months, but Bowlby later broadened this to a sensitive period within the first 36 months

  • Bowlby's theory is described as monotropic

    • He argued that infants form one primary attachment figure before any others, and that the quality of this bond shapes all later relationships

• Bowlby proposed that early attachment creates an internal working model

  • This is a mental representation (schema) of what relationships look like, built from the infant's experience with their primary caregiver

• The internal working model impacts relationships in the following ways:

  • A child who experiences a secure, consistent, and loving relationship will develop an internal working model that leads them to expect positive relationships in the future

  • A child who experiences an inconsistent or negative relationship will develop a working model that leads them to expect negative treatment or to treat others poorly

• The internal working model explains why childhood attachment patterns can affect how adults form relationships

Harlow's monkey studies

• The importance of contact comfort over feeding in attachment was demonstrated by Harry Harlow's (1958) studies with rhesus monkeys

• Harlow created two wire "surrogate mothers":

  • One was made of bare wire but dispensed milk

  • One was covered in soft cloth but dispensed no milk

• Eight infant monkeys were exposed to both surrogates over 165 days:

  • All eight spent the majority of their time clinging to the cloth mother regardless of which dispensed milk

  • Monkeys fed by the wire mother only visited it briefly to feed before returning to the cloth mother

  • When frightened, all monkeys ran to and clung to the cloth mother

  • When exploring novel objects, monkeys kept at least one limb in contact with the cloth mother, using it as a secure base

• Harlow concluded that attachment is formed through contact comfort rather than through feeding

  • This directly contradicting the learning theory view that attachment forms because the caregiver is associated with food

• Long-term follow-up showed that monkeys raised with only wire or cloth surrogates, without normal social contact, developed severe behavioral abnormalities in adulthood, such as:

  • increased aggression

  • poor social skills

  • difficulty mating

  • neglect or abuse of their own offspring

• Monkeys who had some peer contact before 3 months showed partial recovery

• Those isolated for more than 6 months did not recover normal behavior

  • This suggests a critical period for social development

Attachment styles: Ainsworth's Strange Situation

• Mary Ainsworth devised the Strange Situation

  • This is a controlled observational procedure designed to assess the quality of attachment between an infant and their caregiver

• The procedure involved eight 3-minute episodes in which the infant's behavior was observed during:

  • exploration with the caregiver present (secure base behavior)

  • the arrival of a stranger (stranger anxiety)

  • separation from the caregiver (separation anxiety)

  • reunion with the caregiver (reunion behavior)

• Ainsworth identified three attachment styles from her findings

  • A fourth was later identified by Main & Solomon (1986)

• Cross-cultural research shows that attachment styles vary across cultures

  • Secure attachment is the most common type globally, but the distribution of insecure styles differs across cultures

    • Insecure-avoidant attachment is more common in Northern European samples

    • Insecure-anxious attachment is more common in some East Asian and Israeli samples

  • These differences in attachment type reflect cultural differences in caregiving norms

Evaluating Ainsworth's Strange Situation

Strengths

• The procedure is highly standardized

  • All infants go through the same eight episodes in the same order, making it replicable and results comparable across studies

• It has good inter-rater reliability

  • Observers agreed on attachment classifications in 94% of cases, suggesting the attachment types are not subjective

• The findings of Ainsworth's observations show good predictive validity

  • Securely attached infants tend to have better outcomes in later relationships, mental health, and academic achievement

Limitations

• The observation lacks ecological validity

  • The setting is artificial and the episodes are unlikely to occur in everyday life, meaning some infants may be wrongly classified

• Ainsworth used a culturally limited sample

  • The findings may not generalize beyond white, middle-class Western infants

  • E.g., a Japanese study found a high proportion of insecure-anxious classifications, likely reflecting cultural caregiving norms rather than genuine insecurity