074: Attachment: What it is, what it’s not, how to do it, and how to stop stressing about it

Is attachment the same as bonding?  Can I have a healthy attachment with my baby if I don’t breastfeed? Do I have to babywear to develop an attachment to my baby? Will being apart from my baby disrupt our attachment relationship? Is co-sleeping critical to attachment?   These are just a few of the questions that listeners wrote to me after I sent out a call for questions on Attachment. This was such an enormous topic to cover that Dr. Arietta Slade and I did the best we could in the time we had, and we did indeed cover a lot of ground. If you’ve ever been curious about the scientific evidence on how attachment forms, what are its benefits, and what it has NOT been shown to do, this is the episode for you. We also cover reflective functioning, one of the central ways that the attachment relationship develops, and discuss how to improve our skills in this arena.   Check this episode for more attachment research: Most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong   Dr. Arietta Slade's Book Attachment in therapeutic practice - Affiliate link   References Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Benoit, D. (2004). Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Pediatric Child Health 9(8), 541-545. Bowlby, J. (1973/1991). Attachment and Loss: Volume 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. London, U.K.: Penguin. Bowlby, J. (1971/1991). Attachment and Loss: Volume 1. Attachment. London, U.K.: Penguin. Cassidy, J. (2008). The nature of the child’s ties. In J. Cassidy & P.R. Shaver (Eds.) Handbook of Attachment (pp.3-22). New York, NY: Guilford. Greenspan, S.H. & Salmon, J. (2002). The four-thirds solution: Solving the childcare crisis in America today. Boston, MA: Da Capo [Note that Dr. Slade mis-remembered the title of this book as “The Three Fourths Solution”] Hudson, N.W., & Fraley, R.C. (2018). Moving toward greater security: The effects of repeatedly priming attachment security and anxiety. Journal of Research in Personality 74, 147-157. Jones, J.D., Brett, B.E., Ehrlich, K.B., Lejuez, C.W., & Cassidy, J. (2014). Maternal attachment style and responses to adolescents’ negative emotions: The mediating role of maternal emotion regulation. Parenting: Science and Practice 14, 235-257. Julian, T.W., McKenry, P.C., & McKelvey, M.W. (1994). Cultural variations in parenting: Perceptions of Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American parents. Family Relations 43(1), 30-37. LeVine, R.A., & Levine, S. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. New York, NY: PublicAffairs. Marvin, R.S., & Britner, P.A. (2008). Normative Development: The ontogeny of attachment. In J. Cassidy & P.R. Shaver (Eds.) Handbook of Attachment (pp.269-294). New York, NY: Guilford. Nicholson, B., & Parker, L. (2013). How did attachment parenting originate? Attached at the heart. Retrieved from: www.attachedattheheart.attachmentparenting.org/faq/ Raby, K.L., Roisman, G.I., Labella, M.H., Martin, J., Fraley, R.C., & Simpson, J.A. (2018). The legacy of early abuse and neglect for social and academic competence from childhood to adulthood. Online first. Retrieved from https://socialinteractionlab.dl.umn.edu/sites/g/files/pua1356/f/2018/Raby%20et%20al%20%28CD%2C%202018%29.pdf Sadler, L.S., Slade, A., & Mayes, L.C. (2006). Minding the Baby: A mentalization-based parenting Program. In J.G. Allen & P. Fonagy (Eds.), The handbook of mentalization-based treatment (pp.271-288). Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley & Sons. Slade, A. (2014). Imagining fear: Attachment, threat, and psychic experience. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 24(3), 253-266. Slade, A. (2005). Parental reflective functioning: An introduction. Attachment & Human Development 7(3), 269-281. Slade, A., Sadler, L., Dios-Kenn, C.D., Webb, D., Currier-Ezepchick, J., & Mayes, L. (2005). Minding the Baby: A reflective parenting program. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 60, 74-100. Slade, A. (2002). Keeping the baby in mind: A critical factor in perinatal mental health. Zero to Three. June/July, 10-16.     Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:   [00:37] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we have an absolutely gigantic topic together and we have a giant in the academic world to help us think through some vet as well. I’d like to welcome Dr Arietta Slade, clinical professor at the Yale Child Study Center and Professor Emeritus in the doctoral program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York, and she is here today to talk with us on the topic of attachment theory. She’s an internationally recognized theoretician clinician, researcher and teacher. She’s published widely on reflective parenting, the clinical implications of attachment theory, the development of parental mentalization and the relational context of early symbolization. For the last 13 years, she has co-directed Minding the Baby, which is an interdisciplinary reflective parenting home visiting program for high risk mothers, infants, and their families at the Yale Child Study Center and School of Nursing. This program is one of only 18 certified evidence based home visiting programs in the United States. Jen:   [01:37] Now, it does seem to be slightly ambitious to try and cover 60 plus years of research on attachment, which has been conducted by Dr Slade as well as other researchers in a single show, but we’re going to give it a shot. Welcome Dr Slade. Dr. Slade:  [01:49] Hello. How are you today, Jen? Jen:   [01:51] Great. Thanks so much for being with us. So I wonder if we can start all the way at the very beginning. What is attachment and why is it important? Dr. Slade:    [01:58] Well, as you indicated in your introduction, it’s both a really huge topic and a very simple set of ideas. I mean, it’s a huge topic in that it’s been studied for, as you said, 60 years and it’s actually more like 80 years, but at the same time it comprises a set of really simple and accessible ideas and the central idea in attachment theory and has guided a tremendous amount of attachment research. Dr. Slade:    [02:24] There’s three or four, several key ideas. The first is that children, infants, in particular, human infants are born with a predisposition to become connected, to attach to, the people who take care of them, you know, and this is something that is present at birth and an infant is born with a number of ways to signal the people who are caring for him or her about their needs and their desires and their needs for safety and closeness. And these are signaled very, very early on. And this is essentially a biological given that individuals are born with. And there are plenty of other mammalian species that are born with the capacity to develop attachments. Dr. Slade:   [03:00] One of the main components of detachment system is to protect the child from danger so that the child is able from early on to signal alarmed, to reach out with his hands, to look at the parent, to call to the parent saying, I need help. I need comfort, I need