Attachment is the emotional bond that forms between an infant and the people who care for it. John Bowlby and Schaffer & Emerson each mapped how this bond develops, from a newborn with no preference for any one caregiver to a toddler with several lasting attachments.
| Stages | John Bowlby | Schaffer and Emerson |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pre-attachment (Birth to 6 Weeks): The infant does not discriminate between caregivers. | Asocial Stage (0-6 weeks): Infant behavior is directed at anyone or anything with a positive reaction, such as a smile. |
| 2 | Attachment-in-the-Making (6 Weeks to 7 Months): Prefers familiar people but accepts care from anyone. | Indiscriminate Attachment (6 weeks-7 months): Infants prefer people to inanimate objects, but not one person specifically. |
| 3 | Clear-Cut Attachment (7-24 Months): Specific attachment to the primary caregiver(s) develops. | Specific Attachment (7-9 months): Infants prefer particular caregivers and look to them for comfort, security, protection, and reassurance in stressful situations. |
| 4 | Formation of Reciprocal Relationships (24 months +): Children will acquire language skills and better understand the pattern of carers leaving and returning. | Multiple Attachments (10-18 months): Infants become increasingly independent and form attachments with multiple people in their lives who respond sensitively to them, including grandparents, siblings, or neighbors. |
Bowlby’s phases of Attachment?
John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, developed attachment theory, which focuses on the importance of a secure and trusting mother-infant bond on development and wellbeing.
He identified four phases of attachment.
These stages reflect a process where each step builds upon the last, leading to a strong, secure attachment under ideal circumstances.
Bowlby believed that these attachments serve a crucial evolutionary function: they increase the infant’s chance of survival by ensuring its safety and care.
Pre-attachment phase (Birth to 6 Weeks):
In this stage, infants show innate behaviors (like crying and smiling) that help attract caregiver attention and response but do not prefer a specific caregiver.
They accept care and comfort from any adult and do not yet understand that they are separate individuals from their caregivers.Attachment-in-the-Making (6 Weeks to 7 Months):
During this stage, infants develop a sense of trust in the people who respond to their needs.
They start to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people, preferring familiar people, but they still accept care from strangers. They don’t yet protest when separated from a parent.Clear-Cut Attachment (7 Months to 24 Months):
Specific attachment to the primary caregiver(s) develops at this stage.
Infants seek regular contact with their caregivers and may show distress upon separation, demonstrating behaviors like “clinging” and “following.”
This stage also includes the development of “stranger anxiety” and “separation anxiety.”
The onset of stranger anxiety around 7-9 months reflects cognitive advances enabling infants to distinguish familiar from unfamiliar people.
While strangers provoke uncertainty, repeated comforting interactions with a sensitive caregiver provide the infant with the confidence to overcome this wariness.
By age 2, stranger anxiety typically resolves as the child becomes more socially adept.Formation of a Reciprocal Relationship (24 Months and Onwards):
As language develops, toddlers understand their parents’ actions and motivations and can negotiate with them.
They can now tolerate separations with less distress and use mental representations of their caregivers for comfort.
Critical Evaluation
- Limited Discrimination at Birth: Bowlby proposed that newborns cannot yet discriminate between caregivers and will accept care from whoever provides it, relying mainly on crying to get it.
- Early Recognition Abilities: Babies can recognise their mother’s voice and smell soon after birth (Kisilevsky et al., 2003; Porter & Winberg, 1999).
- Mother’s Presence Not Required: This early recognition does not mean only the mother can soothe a newborn; many caregivers can calm a distressed baby.
- Early Self-Regulation: A newborn’s cry-and-be-soothed pattern with caregivers is an early attempt at self-regulation.
- Growing Behavioural Repertoire: Over the first months, babies develop more attachment behaviours beyond crying.
Schaffer & Emerson’s Stages of Attachment
Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson (1964) studied 60 babies (31 boys and 29 girls) at monthly intervals during their first year, with a follow-up visit at 18 months. This is known as a longitudinal study.
The children were all studied in their own homes, and a regular pattern was identified in the development of attachment. Researchers observed the babies’ interactions with their carers and interviewed the carers at each visit.
The mother kept a diary, and the following measures were recorded:
- Stranger Anxiety: response to the arrival of a stranger.
- Separation Anxiety: distress level when separated from a carer, and how much comfort was needed on return.
- Social Referencing: how much a child looks to a carer to check how to respond to something new (a secure base).
They discovered that baby’s attachments develop in the following sequence:
Asocial (0 – 6 weeks):
Very young infants are asocial in that many kinds of stimuli, both social and non-social, produce a favorable reaction, such as a smile.
During the asocial stage, the infant’s behavior does not appear specifically directed towards primary caregivers over others. The infant may respond to humans and objects similarly, showing generalized responses like crying, smiling, and looking at faces or objects.
Although termed “asocial,” it doesn’t imply that the baby has no interest in social interaction. Still, rather than undifferentiated interactions, they do not yet show a strong preference for any one person or display an understanding of social behavior. This is the period before specific, strong social bonds are formed.
Remember that despite its name, the asocial stage is important for social development. The interactions during this stage lay the groundwork for later stages of attachment.Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 7 months):
During this stage, infants start to display more social behavior and begin to show a preference for social stimuli, preferring human interaction over inanimate objects. They smile, babble, and reach out more to people rather than objects.
Infants indiscriminately enjoy human company; most babies respond equally to any caregiver. They get upset when an individual ceases to interact with them.
The infants are sociable and “indiscriminate” in their attachment because they do not show a strong preference for a single caregiver over others. They recognize and respond to more people, but they do not yet differentiate significantly between familiar and unfamiliar adults.
From 3 months, infants smile more at familiar faces and can be easily comfortable by a regular caregiver.Specific Attachment (7 – 9 months):
Special preference for a single attachment figure. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort, and protection. It shows fear of strangers (stranger fear) and unhappiness when separated from a special person (separation anxiety).
Some babies show stranger fear and separation anxiety much more frequently and intensely than others, but they are evidence that the baby has formed an attachment. This has usually developed by one year of age.
The study’s results indicated that attachments were most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby’s signals, not the person they spent more time with. Schaffer and Emerson called this sensitive responsiveness.
In 39% of cases, the person who did the most physical caretaking (usually the mother) was not the baby’s primary attachment figure. The strongest predictor was sensitive responsiveness to the baby’s signals, not who fed them or spent the most time with them.
Intensely attached infants had mothers who responded quickly to their demands and, interacted with their child. Infants who were weakly attached had mothers who failed to interact.
The most important fact in forming attachments is not who feeds and changes the child but who plays and communicates with him or her. Therefore, sensitive responsiveness to the baby’s signals appeared to be the key to the attachment.Multiple Attachment (10 months and onwards):
The baby becomes increasingly independent and forms several attachments. By 18 months, the majority of infants have formed multiple attachments.
By around 7 months, 29% of infants had already formed several attachments, and 10% had five or more. By 10 months, 59% had more than one attachment. By 18 months, 87% had formed multiple attachments.
The primary attachment was not always the mother. At 18 months, only about half of infants were most strongly attached to their mother, around a third to their father, and about 17% equally to both parents. This directly challenges Bowlby’s idea that one mother-figure is uniquely primary.
The study also has real methodological strengths that balance these limitations:
- Longitudinal Design: The same infants were tracked over time, so age differences reflect real developmental change rather than differences between groups of different children.
- Ecological Validity: Observations took place in the infants’ own homes during everyday routines, making the findings more likely to reflect how attachment develops in real life.
- Theoretical Value: The study produced a testable model of sensitive responsiveness that has shaped decades of further research and has broad applied relevance for childcare and parenting.
Critical Evaluation
Several limitations affect how far the findings generalise:
- Population Validity: The 60 infants came from Glasgow, mostly working-class families, so the sample cannot represent other social classes or cultures.
- Diary Reliability: Data came largely from mothers’ diaries and reports, which may involve social desirability bias and under-reporting of distress, since diaries were not kept by trained, objective observers.
- Temperament Confound: The link between caregiver sensitivity and attachment is correlational; an “easy,” sociable infant may simply be easier to respond to and quicker to attach regardless of caregiving.
- Historical Validity: The study was conducted in 1960s Glasgow, when fathers rarely did routine childcare, so its timetable may not generalise to modern parenting.
- Culture-Bound Timetable: The stage sequence reflects a Western, individualist family structure; in many collectivist cultures, infants form multiple attachments from birth (Tronick et al., 1992).
Contemporary Research
Modern research has tested Schaffer and Emerson’s central claims with far larger samples than a 60-infant diary study could offer. The strongest evidence comes from meta-analyses that pool many studies of infants’ attachments to both parents.
- Aim: To test how an infant’s attachment network to both parents, not the mother-child bond alone, predicts later internalising and externalising behaviour problems.
- Method: Researchers pooled individual-level data from 9 studies covering 1,097 children who had been assessed for attachment to both their mother and father, mostly using the Strange Situation.
- Results: Children insecurely attached to one or both parents had more internalising problems. Children disorganised with both parents had more externalising problems, and mother-child and father-child attachment mattered in similar ways.
- Conclusion: A child’s whole attachment network predicts adjustment better than the mother-child bond alone, and the father is a developmentally important attachment figure in his own right.
A further meta-analysis by Pinquart (2022) compared attachment security to mothers and fathers across 95 studies. The gap is small.
Security to fathers was only slightly lower than to mothers, and the two were moderately correlated. This supports Schaffer and Emerson’s claim that fathers are genuine attachment figures in their own right, not weaker copies of the maternal bond.
Key Takeaways
- Two Models: Bowlby proposed four phases of attachment, and Schaffer and Emerson independently proposed four stages from their Glasgow study; the two largely agree.
- Not Feeding: Schaffer and Emerson found infants attach most strongly to whoever responds sensitively to their signals, not to whoever feeds them.
- Multiple Attachments: By 18 months, most infants have several attachments, often including the father, challenging the idea that only one bond is primary.
- Small Sample: The original study followed just 60 Glasgow families in the 1960s, which limits how far its exact timetable generalises today.
- Modern Support: Large recent meta-analyses confirm that attachments to fathers are nearly as secure as attachments to mothers, and that both matter for development.
References
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss. Volume II. Separation, anxiety and anger. In Attachment and loss. volume II. Separation, anxiety and anger (pp. 429-p).
Bowlby, J. (1980). Loss: Sadness & depression. Attachment and loss (vol. 3); (International psycho-analytical library no.109). London: Hogarth Press.
Dagan, O., Schuengel, C., Verhage, M. L., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Sagi-Schwartz, A., Madigan, S., Duschinsky, R., Roisman, G. I., Bernard, K., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., Bureau, J.-F., Volling, B. L., Wong, M. S., Colonnesi, C., Brown, G. L., Eiden, R. D., Fearon, R. M. P., Oosterman, M., Aviezer, O., … Cummings, E. M. (2021). Configurations of mother–child and father–child attachment relationships as predictors of internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems: An individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2021(180), 67–94. https://doi.org/10.1002/cad.20450
Kisilevsky, B. S., Hains, S. M., Lee, K., Xie, X., Huang, H., Ye, H. H., … & Wang, Z. (2003). Effects of experience on fetal voice recognition. Psychological science, 14(3), 220-224.
Pinquart, M. (2022). Attachment security to mothers and fathers: A meta-analysis on mean-level differences and correlations of behavioural measures. Infant and Child Development, 31(6), e2364. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2364
Porter, R., & Winberg, J. (1999). Unique salience of maternal breast odors for newborn infants. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 23(3), 439-449.
Schaffer, H. R., & Emerson, P. E. (1964). The development of social attachments in infancy. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 29(3), 1–77. https://doi.org/10.2307/1165727
Tronick, E. Z., Morelli, G. A., & Ivey, P. K. (1992). The Efe forager infant and toddler’s pattern of social relationships: Multiple and simultaneous. Developmental Psychology, 28(4), 568–577. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.28.4.568
