Rethinking attachment

Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation” experiment (fictional image generated by ChatGPT)

Hot take: our attachment styles actually say more about how we relate to the world as a whole than how we relate to other people, per se.

No, really, hear me out:

The common view is that attachment styles reflect our internal working models of what to expect in major relationships, largely based on our earliest relationships with caregivers. Let's call this the "generalized-caregiver-model" (GCM) view. Here are some problems with the GCM:

1) Even the most secure child-caregiver relationship is too weird and unique to serve as a good model for adult relationships. A healthy adult relationship (including with our former caregivers) presupposes 2 independent agents who no longer require "caregiving".

Indeed, part of being a "securely attached" adult is not wanting or needing to be mothered by your friends/partners/colleagues; if you do, this generally reflects an unmet developmental need. The best caregivers are those who make themselves obsolete (qua caregivers, at least).

2) The best evidence we have for distinct childhood attachment styles that have enduring effects in adulthood comes from Ainsworth's famous "strange situation". Note the key differences in how children react to this situation:

True, some kids get more visibly distressed at mom's leaving and more readily comforted by her return than others; but the key differentiator between the "secure" and “insecure" kids is how much interest they show in the rest of their environment throughout the experiment.

The anxiously preoccupied kids cling to mom upon her return, whereas the avoidant kids pay her little heed. But, crucially, neither type of kid shows as much independent interest and initiative in exploring the rest of the room as the securely attached kid.

This difference, I submit, has way bigger implications for adulthood, and for what we should be doing as caregivers, than any of the things we tend to focus on when we think about attachment styles.

3) All the functions of "responsive parenting", the best studied approach for fostering secure attachment, are functions we should ideally be able to perform for ourselves as adults: accurately identifying our own needs, responding to them consistently and appropriately, etc.

What distinguishes the best responsive parents from overprotective or permissive ones is that they set up the child's world in a way that equips her to identify and fulfill her own needs, rather than always swooping in to do it for her:

For an infant this can mean offering a breast when she's hungry, or putting her on her tummy when she wants to move; for a toddler it often means helping her put words to her feelings, or giving her access to developmentally appropriate problem-solving tools.

(Like when my then-2-year-old refused to nap in her room because "the sun was up," but eagerly relocated all her naptime paraphernalia and took the most glorious nap after I suggested she try sleeping in the slightly darker guest room. Or when my now-2-year-old clings to the breakfast table and cries “I don’t wanna go to school!”, until I offer to put his plum in a plastic bag for him to eat as a snack in the classroom, at which point he lights up and says “I wanna go to school”!)

If I put words to the "internal working model" I was trying to build for them in those moments, and in all my better parenting moments, it would roughly amount to: "the world is a place where I can thrive, and it's up to me to do it." This is the “generalized-world-model” (GWM) most closely corresponding to secure attachment.

In fact, this model only becomes fully and literally true as we approach adulthood—once we no longer need to rely on unchosen caregivers to chaperone our relationship with the world. We still need love and inspiration and visibility and connection from other humans, of course, but these needs are on a par with other needs, like health and meaningful work and financial resilience, which we ideally have the capacity to fulfill by our own chosen efforts and on our own terms. We are at home in the world, and can trust ourselves to get from it what we need.

We're free to love and connect with others, partly because we aren't paralyzed by the fear of losing them; we know our ability to function in the world does not fundamentally depend on them.

This is my hope for both of my kids. If all goes well for them developmentally, they will have the needed mental and physical capacities to choose and manage all their life projects independently, through their own direct causal agency—brooking no unchosen intermediaries between themselves and their world.

But to internalize this model of the relationship in which they stand to their world, they need to experience relating to their world in this unmediated way from early on, even before it’s strictly true. And this is where responsive caregiving comes in.

The best way I can give them the experience of exerting direct causal impact on the world is by "filling in the developmental gaps," so to speak; by lending my own agential powers to their cause until they are ready to sub in their own. The clearest example, for me, is when our then-2-year-old Alice (and now-2-year-old Adam) would instruct me or their dad on what to draw, and we would lend our (only slightly, in my case) more developed fine motor skills to their artistic vision. Some form of this is also happening when I curate their food and clothing selections to fit with their evolving preferences, while also explaining, in cause-effect terms they can understand and relate to their own needs, why I'm not honoring certain preferences (e.g., because "this type of drink would make you sick" or "you're not quite big enough to fit into that sweater yet").

All of this basically squares with the recommendations of "responsive parenting," paired with Montessori's recommendations for preparing the child's environment so she's always equipped to fulfill her own needs through the materials provided her.

But contra the explicit aims of attachment-based parenting, my primary goal is not to get them securely attached to me; it's to get them in direct, joyful and capable contact with their world, whilst making myself as peripheral and unintrusive a player in that relationship as possible.

Conversely, the failure modes I'm trying to steer clear of are ones where their path to impacting the world is through my arbitrary whims and preferences—making me, not the logic of reality, the final arbiter of whether and how they get their needs met.

This failure mode isn't reserved for cruel or unthinking parents; I've fallen into it simply by going back on previously set limits (e.g., "we brush our teeth before bed") because I'm too tired to insist, or letting my reflexive "hurray" become my toddler’s main reward for using the potty.

A few isolated instances like this aren't likely to do lasting harm (I hope!). But the more we let our own moods intervene between a kid's causal reasoning and reality, the more we message that their need-fulfillment is not fundamentally up to them. This naturally leads them either to 1) feel tethered to others' good favors as a prerequisite to their own need-fulfillment (hence becoming “anxiously attached”), and/or 2) suppressing their needs altogether so they don’t have to be so tethered (hence becoming “avoidantly attached”).

Personally I've found it quite clarifying to reinterpret the findings of attachment research through this lens. Instead of worrying about whether my kids have a secure enough relationship with me, I'm instead focused on curating their relationship with the world: a world filled with chosen delights they can pursue by their own thoughtful efforts, but not through tantrums or coercion; where their actions have real, discernible consequences; where knowledge gives them power; where there are no artificial limits on what they can envision and build.

[This post is a lightly edited version of this 2022 Twitter thread, which I’m reposting here by popular demand]