Schaffer’s stages of attachment

• Schaffer (1964)


  Conducted a longitudinal study where they conducted naturalistic observations on babies in their homes in Glasgow each month until they were 18 months
• Schaffer's stages of attachment


  • Asocial stage (0-6 weeks): babies show similar responses to inanimate objects and people
  • Indiscriminate stage (6 weeks-6 months): infants can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people but will accept comfort from anyone
  • Specific stage (7 months+): infants show a preference for one caregiver; looking to them for security, comfort and protection. Infant will display separation anxiety when the person they have formed a specific attachment to leaves the room. They start to display stranger anxiety particularly when the primary attachment figure is missing
  • Multiple attachments stage (10 months+): the infant will show separation anxiety to secondary attachments
• Schaffer's stages of attachment


  Can guide parents on when infants are developmentally ready to begin day-care
• Specific stage of attachment

  Children may struggle to adapt to day-care due to separation and stranger anxiety
• Multiple stage of attachment


  Children are ready to form multiple attachments and so may more readily accept comfort from secondary attachments
• Schaffer's research is culturally biased as it only used participants from Glasgow, who were predominantly white British working-class people
• There is conflicting evidence to suggest that children are able to form multiple attachments from the outset, especially in collectivist cultures where the infant forms multiple attachments to wider family members
• Schaffer's stages cannot be generalised to people from all cultures, and therefore lacks population/external validity
• Strengths of Schaffer's research

  • He collected data using naturalistic observations. Parents and children were observed in their own homes, and most of the observations were done by the parents themselves during ordinary activities and reported back to Schaffer. This means that children would have been unaffected by the presence of observers and behaved naturally. This means that the results can be generalised to real life and therefore the study has high ecological/external validity
• Schaffer's research discovered that the infant will form an attachment with whoever is the most sensitive and responsive to their needs - responding to their signals with the most skill
• In 65% of the children the first specific attachment was to the mother, in 30% it was the father and for the rest it was another family member
• Mothers can return to work after having a baby

  This challenges the traditional view that mothers should stay at home to look after the children when there is an alternative suitable adult
• If the mother returns to work


  This will have positive implications for the economy as she will be earning and spending money. If she places the child in day-care this also creates more jobs generating money for the economy