stages of attachment

• 1. Schaffer and Emerson conducted a study on 60 infants from working class homes in Glasgow. At the start infants ranged from 5-23 weeks till they were a year. Mothers were visited every 4 weeks and they reported the infant’s response to separation in 7 different situations. Mother also reported the range of protest the infant did. They used the findings to create the stages of attachment.
• 2. Stage one is the asocial stage. This is from around birth to 2 months. In this stage infants produce similar responses to all objects, animate and inanimate. Towards the end they begin to show a preference towards social stimuli like a smiling face. Reciprocity and interactional synchrony play a part. Stage 2 is the presocial stage. They show a preference to humans rather than objects. They start to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people.
• 3. Stage 3 is specific attachment. Infants start to show stranger anxiety and separation anxiety and including being happy at reunion. They are also said to have formed a specific attachment to one particular person, their primary attachment figure. 65% of this is to the mum, rarely the father but the father is more likely to be the joint first object.
• 4. The 4th and last stage are multiple attachments. Very soon after specific, the infant develops a wider circle of multiple attachments. Schaffer and Emerson found within 1 month of becoming attached 29% had attachments to someone else which could be sibling, grandparent etc. within 6 months this had risen to 78%. Separation anxiety is also involved in these attachments
• An issue with this study is that the data may be unreliable.

  This is due to the fact that the reports are based on the mothers’ reports of their own children. Some of these mothers may be less sensitive to the infants’ protests and are therefore less likely to report them. They may also not report anything that would make them look bad or change the reports.

  This therefore can create a systematic bias which would challenge the validity of the data.
• The sample collected is also seen as bias.

  The sample was from a working-class population and so the findings may not be able to be generalised to other social groups. The sample was also from the 1960s. Parental care of children has changed considerably since then and many more women go out to work so they are cared for outside the home, or even the father is the main caregiver. Dads who stay home to care for their children has quadrupled over the last 25 years.

  Therefore, if a similar experiment was carried out nowadays, the results may differ from the ones Schaffer and Emerson found.
• Another difficulty is that this is a stage theory which suggests that development is inflexible.

  A stage theory shows that there is a fixed process and order for development. For example, it suggests that infants first develop a single attachment before multiple. However, in some situations or cultures multiple attachments may come first.

  The use of stage theories may then lead to infants being classed as abnormal which can be problematic if this is just due to the situation or culture.
• There is a discussion related to whether multiple attachments are all equal or if some have special significance.

  Bowlby’s view was than an infant forms one special emotional relationship. Subsidiary to this is many other secondary attachments which are important as an emotional safety net. For example, fathers offers a special kind of care and siblings are important for a different reason.

  This suggests that Bowlby may have been wrong about the idea of a hierarchy of attachments.