As I was searching for articles on attachment, I ran across a very interesting research study on attachment. For 25 years, Dr. Erickson and her colleagues have been studying parent-child interactions in a longitudinal study. They wanted to know how parent-infant attachment develops, how it changes over time, and how the quality of attachment in infancy influences long-term development. Other professionals offer insightful case studies of attachment-based intervention (Research, p.1). They tell us what it is like to help individual parents move beyond their own experiences of need, loss, and trauma, and begin to provide love, nurturance, and emotionally responsive care to their babies.
             In 1975, they registered a group of high-risk young women who were pregnant with their first child. All of the women were from a poverty background, a majority were single, and most had a low level of education. They have collected detailed information from many sources, including a variety of observations of mother and child in natural and laboratory settings, semi-structured and structured interviews, and standardized assessments of parents and their children (Research, p.3) The goal was to identify factors that account for good parenting and healthy parent-child relationships, even in the face of high-risk circumstances.
             They found that love, nurturance, and emotionally responsive care from a primary caregiver are essential for normal, healthy development and attachment. Attachment is the affective bond that develops between an infant and a primary caregiver and it is also a pattern of interactions that develop over time as the infant and care giver interact, particularly in the context of the infant's needs and bids for attention and comfort (Research, p.3). The caregiver's response to such bids help mold the attachment relationship into a pattern of interactions that develops over the first year of life. Attachment sup...