Cornerstones of Attachment Research re-examines the work of key laboratories that have contributed to the study of attachment. In doing so, the book traces the development in a single scientific paradigm through parallel but separate lines of inquiry. Chapters address the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main and Hesse, Sroufe and Egeland, and Shaver and Mikulincer. Cornerstones of Attachment Research utilises attention to these five research groups as a lens on wider themes and challenges faced by attachment research over the decades. The chapters draw on a complete analysis of published scholarly and popular works by each research group, as well as much unpublished material.

An unsettled question in attachment theory and research is the extent to which children's attachment patterns with mothers and fathers jointly predict developmental outcomes. In this study, we used individual participant data meta-analysis to assess whether early attachment networks with mothers and fathers are associated with children's internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems. Following a pre-registered protocol, data from 9 studies and 1,097 children (mean age: 28.67 months) with attachment classifications to both mothers and fathers were included in analyses. We used a linear mixed effects analysis to assess differences in children's internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems as assessed via the average of both maternal and paternal reports based on whether children had two, one, or no insecure (or disorganized) attachments. Results indicated that children with an insecure attachment relationship with one or both parents were at higher risk for elevated internalizing behavioral problems compared with children who were securely attached to both parents. Children whose attachment relationships with both parents were classified as disorganized had more externalizing behavioral problems compared to children with either one or no disorganized attachment relationship with their parents. Across attachment classification networks and behavioral problems, findings suggest (a) an increased vulnerability to behavioral problems when children have insecure or disorganized attachment to both parents, and (b) that mother-child and father-child attachment relationships may not differ in the roles they play in children's development of internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems.

No abstract

Attachment is the inborn bias of human children to seek the availability of familiar caregivers in times of stress. It has been observed from ancient times and in many cultures, and scaffolds further physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. The security of these relationships is shaped by the continuity and quality of the child-rearing environment, and is independent of biological ties to the caregiver. In this chapter, the child’s right to a “good-enough”—that is, at least minimally adequate but not necessarily ‘best’--family life and the importance of a stable network of attachment relationships is highlighted. Legal issues raised by multi-parent care, including questions around the use of attachment-based assessments for custody decisions, are addressed. Attachment theory is well equipped to inform what caregiving arrangements children need, and legislators, judges, and lawyers may consult it as a source of insight into “good-enough” care arrangements in the interest of the child.

This paper explores the considerations of sexualisation, and of gender stereotyping, in the recent United Kingdom government report Letting Children be Children. This report, the Bailey Review, claimed to represent the views of parents. However, closer reading reveals that, whilst the parents who were consulted were concerned about both the sexualisation and the gender stereotyping of products aimed at children, the Bailey Review focuses only on the former, and dismisses the latter. 'Sexualisation' has four faces in the Bailey Review:it is treated as a process that increases 1) the visibility of sexual content in the public domain, 2) misogyny, 3) the sexuality of children, and 4) the mainstream position of 'deviant' sexual behaviours and lifestyles. Through this construction of 'sexualisation', gendered relations of power are not only hidden from view, but buttress a narrative in which young women are situated as children, and their sexuality and desire rendered pathological and morally unacceptable as judged by a conservative standard of decency.Comparison of the treatment of sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the review is revealing of the political motivations behind it, and of wider discourse in these areas.