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the system broadens to include and accommodate the infant’s more advanced physi- cal and cognitive abilities, but it still serves the purpose of making the child secure. In the context of this attachment system, an affectional bond develops between infant and caregiver. Bowlby argued that as a result of cognitive and emo- tional developments in the infancy period, the baby’s connection to the caregiver emerges in stages, with a full-fledged attachment likely by about 7 or 8 months. Schaffer and Emerson (1964) followed the development of a group of infants through their first 18 months and found a sequence of attachment stages consistent with those Bowlby has described. In the first 2 months, infants signal their needs, producing behaviors such as clinging, smiling, and crying. Although we now know that even newborns have some ability to recognize their mothers’ voices (e.g., DeCasper & Fifer, 1980), they show little sign of discriminating among potential caregivers or of having a social preference, so that babies cannot yet be seen as attached to anyone. Next, between about 2 and 7 or 8 months, infants gradually show stronger and stronger preferences for particular caregivers, as when a baby smiles more brightly or is more readily soothed by Mom or Dad than by Grandma or Uncle Bill. Usu- ally by 8 months, babies behave in ways that signal a strong preference for one caregiver, most often the mother. The chief indicator of attachment is that an infant will protest being separated from the mother and will greet her happily when she returns. Along with this separation anxiety (see Chapter 3 for a full description) may come stranger anxiety: an increased tendency to be wary of strangers and to seek the comfort and protection of the primary caregiver when a stranger is pres- ent. Note that infants can recognize familiar faces and voices much earlier than 7 or 8 months, and they may show some wariness with strangers, but a more intense reaction is common once other indicators of the first attachment emerge. Stranger anxiety has not been found in some cultures, like the Nso in Camaroon, where friend- liness toward strangers is a cultural practice (Keller & Otto, 2009). Finally, Schaffer and Emerson observed that soon after babies show signs of their first emotional attachment, many of them are forming other attachments as well, with their fathers, with regular babysitters, with older siblings, and with other family members. By 18 months, most of the babies in their study were attached to more than one person.

Attachment is a system, not a particular set of behaviors. The system serves three purposes: It maintains proximity between infant and caregiver, nurturing the emotional bond (called proximity maintenance); it provides the potential for on- going protection (called secure base); and it creates a haven for the infant when distressed (called safe haven). Behaviors as diverse as smiling and crying all serve attachment functions, and as already noted, the particular behaviors serving these functions can change over time and circumstance. When helpers reflect on problems faced by children and families, attachment theory indicates that the proper unit of analysis is at the level of relationships. That is, a behavior (e.g., crying or clinging) must be interpreted within its social context to understand its significance.

Let’s consider the notion of safe haven more specifically, for it is here that attachments serve the important function of stress management. Think back, for a moment, to the earlier discussion of emotion regulation. The infant has limited ability to regulate his episodes of physiological distress. Threats such as hunger, pain, fatigue, loneliness, or overstimulation can produce periods of dysregulation or heightened arousal. Some infants are more easily aroused than others because of individual differences in autonomic reactivity. For all infants, and especially for these more sensitive and vulnerable ones, the stressfulness of physical or emotional dis- comfort activates the attachment system. By crying, clinging, or showing distress in some other way, the infant signals his need for his caregiver to step in to help man- age stress. Distress, triggered from within the infant or from without, activates the attachment system. The helpless infant needs a caregiver to deactivate his escalating discomfort. With time, sensitive caregiving episodes become associated with relief and love for the caregiver. The caregiver who scaffolds the child’s own developing capacity to regulate his emotions also helps him form a positive social bond.

Separation anxiety and wariness of strangers appear across cultures, although the behaviors that the children show to indicate anxiety vary across cultures. How are these behaviors necessary for the development of attachment relationships?

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Title: The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4e Server: Short / Normal / LongC / M / Y / K/

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The parents of a 4-year-old boy named Peter brought him to erik erikson for treatment of a frightening problem that appeared to be emotionally based. Peter retained his feces for up to a week at a time, and his colon had become enlarged. As he learned more about Peter, erikson came to see his problem as a reaction to the way oth- ers had dealt with normal, stage-appropriate behavior. Before the problem began, Peter had entered what erikson described as the developmental stage of initiative versus guilt, when it is common for children to intrude themselves on others in a rather aggressive way—such as trying to take over the conversation at the dinner ta- ble or, as in Peter’s case, being physically aggressive and bossy with adults (see Table 1.2 in chapter 1). Peter’s aggressive style was toler- ated amiably by his nanny, but his mother was disturbed by it and by the nanny’s tolerance, so she fired the nanny. Peter’s anal retention problem started soon afterward. eventually, erikson helped Peter to see that his problem was related to his distress at losing his beloved nanny. Peter, erikson felt, was identifying with the nanny, who had told Peter that she was going to have a baby of her own, and he was trying to hold on to her by retaining his feces.

erikson’s work with Peter reflects the Freudian roots of his per- spective. He saw Peter’s 4-year-old aggressiveness with his nanny as having sexual overtones, a normal process for a child in Freud’s phal- lic stage. When Peter’s aggressiveness led to the painful loss of the beloved nanny, he regressed to using behaviors more typical of the anal stage: holding on to his feces. But erikson’s interpretation also reveals his innovative, psychosocial perspective, which went well beyond his Freudian training. Preschoolers need to express their bold new sense of initiative. Adults can be accepting of this need, even as they impose some constraints so that children will learn to behave in socially acceptable ways. In the process, children will learn to curb their own behavior, controlled by their own feelings of guilt. But when constraints are imposed in an abrupt, disapproving, unsupportive way, or when they are excessive, children’s appropri- ate exuberance can be stifled, leading a child to be overly restrained and guilty about normal behavior. Just as in infancy, when children

must form basic trust, the warmth, sensitivity, and understanding of responsive adults are important ingredients in the development of positive feelings about self or others.

erik H. erikson (1902–1994) was the son of Danish parents; his mother was Jewish, his father, Protestant. His parents separated before he was born, and he was raised in Germany by his mother and stepfather. His undistinguished youth seems an unlikely be- ginning for a great developmental theorist. He was something of a misfit as a young boy. His ethnicity as a Jew coupled with his Gentile appearance caused him to experience social rejection from both his Jewish and his Gentile peers. As a young man, erik, born erik Homberger, changed his surname to erikson—a clear attempt to construct his own identity. He was not much of a student, and after high school, uncertain of his goals or interests, he wandered through europe rather than attend college. He studied art for a while, wandered again, and eventually accepted an offer to teach children at a school where Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund, was a cofounder. Thus began his life’s work as a child clinician. He studied psychoanalysis with Anna Freud, and when he and his wife, Joan, fled europe in 1933 with the rise of Hitler, he became the first child analyst in Boston. In his career as a therapist and developmental theorist, he held faculty appointments at Yale, in the university of california system, and finally at Harvard, despite the fact that he had earned no degrees beyond high school. In his scholarly work he not only contributed to research and theory on normal person- ality development, including the formerly uncharted area of adult life stages, but he also pioneered exploration into cross-cultural variations in development, observing the life experiences of Sioux Indians in South Dakota and of Yurok Indians in california. Although erikson extended his work to include adult developmental issues, he seems to have had a special concern for the vulnerability of chil- dren. In his writing on child rearing, he urged parents to recognize that the most fundamental requirement of good parenting is to pro- vide a sense of security, to give children the benefit of calm, reliable care, starting in earliest infancy.