Following Bowlby’s work and study of ‘maternal depravation’ and attachment theory, his colleague, Ainsworth, took over his work. In 1964, Ainsworth published an article on maternal responses to infant behavior and she concluded that mothers respond differently depending on whether they feel threatened by their children’s attachment behaviors (which may include crying) or if they feel safe and loved. She found that when infants cry, mothers who were insecure tended to respond with hostility, rejecting and punishing them. Mothers who responded positively tended to give comfort, warmth, and attention. These findings led her to develop a new system of classifying mother-child interactions based on how these responses were received by the child.
She identified three basic types of attachment: secure, avoidant, and resistant. In a secure attachment, a child feels safe in her relationship with her parents and can trust them to be present and responsive. When they fail to provide these things, she may develop an insecure attachment style, such as being anxious-avoidant. Anxious–resistance occurs when a child is afraid of being abandoned and becomes hyper-vigilant about her parents’ availability.
