The other day I gave a talk at a conference for early childhood daycare providers. During the question and answer period one woman asked a question I have heard often both from parents and child care providers. The woman said that many of the parents who come to pick up their children are concerned that their children are more attached to the person looking after them during the day, than they are to their parents. While this is a natural and understandable concern, it happens to be unwarranted. To understand why this is so it is necessary to provide a brief summary of attachment theory and research.

The concept of attachment was introduced by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, John Bowlby. It is based on evolutionary theory and ethnographic research. Bowlby argued that infants need, after the first six months of life, to establish a bond with a caregiver who interacts with them socially in a sensitive and caring way. This interaction enables the infant to attach to the care giver and provides the infant with the emotional and social security to actively explore his or her world. From an evolutionary point of view, attachment is necessary for survival. In the usual case the mother tends to be the attachment figure but this can be anyone who consistently provides sensitive social interactions with the infant.

Attachment is assessed by a procedure introduced by psychologist Mary Ainsworth called the strange situation test. An infant is placed in a room with his or her mother. How the infant behaves when a stranger enters the room and interacts with the mother, and when the mother leaves the room provide indices of the type of attachment the infant has to the parent. Securely attached children show some stress when the mother leaves, but freely explore the environment in her absence and show happiness on her return. Avoidant-Insecure infants show little distress when the mother leaves, are reluctant to explore and show little preference for the mother over a complete stranger. Resistant-Insecure (ambivalent children) show little independent exploration, great separation anxiety and an ambivalent response to her mother on her return.

The important point is that the infant attaches to primarily one person and that is usually the mother. For it is the mother, or father who provides the most consistent 24/7 care on weekends, holidays and when the child is ill. Parents provide more and more individual care than can be provided by a day care provider. A baby becomes securely attached to parents who consistently talk, sing, cuddle the baby as well as seeing to his or her nutritional and toileting needs; just the kinds of activities that we have emphasized and advocated in the Just Ask Baby videos.

A number of studies have shown that the kind of attachment the infant has during infancy has long lasting effects. Securely attached infants are like to be more emotionally secure and socially competent as adults than are children with the other types of attachment.  

What I refer to open parenting I am talking about parents who open their children up to different cultures, different languages, different races and different religions. Such parents are not concerned about bad or good, but rather want to enrich their children’s understanding of the importance, richness and beauty of human diversity. Hawaii is one of the best of examples of open parenting on a broad scale. Interracial marriage is so common there as to approach the norm.

I recall that as a child I saw a movie in which a dead body fell out of a closet. For a long time after that I made sure that there was nothing in our closet before I went to bed. Even so, I would still wake up frightened of what might come out of that closet. Such fears are common in childhood and have many different causes, but seeing something scary at a movie or on TV is a frequent starting point for such anxieties.

In the US today it is estimated that some 80 percent of children six years and younger spend part or full time in out-of-home child care. This reflects the significant increase of mothers of young children in the work force. This new demographic has raised concerns about the impact on infants and young children of being cared for outside the home by non-parental caregivers. Many small studies have provided conflicting answers to this question because of sampling and other factors.

I was on a radio program the other day with a woman who contends that she has a technique for teaching infants to read and to do math. She is but one of a large number of entrepreneurs who have started companies to produce books, videos, and training guides for parents who want to give their children an academic Head Start.