Attachment: A critical need

All humans are born helpless and dependent.

For even our most basic needs, we need other people — care givers — to eat, drink, avoid harm, survive.

To get this care, babies are born with a predisposition to “become attached” to their care givers. Attachment means that the child forms a relationship with the care giver over time in which they feel they can depend on the care giver to meet their needs, leading the child to feel safe and secure.

Children naturally act in ways that promote attachment — smiling, clinging and cooing.

When the child is distressed — they are hungry, wet or tired — they cry, activating the care giver to meet their needs.

“Attachment theory” describes the models that children build of their caregivers based on their experiences, and proposes that the strategies children employ with caregivers are developed to get their needs met in light of that model.

Secure attachment means that the care giver typically responds to the distress and helps the child re-regulate. The child learns through this process that the care giver is someone they can depend on reliably. This sense of security and safety allows the child to begin exploring the world, developing a sense of independent agency that allows them to meet their own needs (self regulate) and become self aware.

If the child’s needs aren’t consistently met (whether in the eyes of the child or in reality), then an “insecure attachment” is formed.

There are three general categories of insecure attachment:

1. Pre-occupied — the child feels the relationship isn’t secure but could be rewarding, and therefore becomes fixated on monitoring the relationship. This fixation on the relationship status makes it very difficult to explore anything else, and often leads to difficulty in developing an independent sense of agency.

2. Fearful — the child feels the relationship isn’t secure and is potentially a source of punishment. That said, the child doesn’t feel like they can meet their own needs, so still feels dependent on the caregiver. As a result, the child withdraws from intimacy, and behaves in ways that are socially avoidant — only tepidly seeking out attachment figures.

3. Dismissing — the child feels the relationship is insecure and punishing and believes they can meet their own needs without the care giver. The child therefore discards attachment and focuses solely on their agency in meeting their own needs.

Each of these styles involves building a model the self — our ability to meet our own needs — and the other — their ability to meet our needs. When we feel comfortable that our needs are mostly met, we are free to dig into the nuances of our own agency and the other person’s agency in meeting our needs. We develop deep models of our own minds and others — leading to self reflection and individuation (knowing who we are) and mentalization and empathy (knowing who the other is and how they operate).

Insecure attachment does not leave much room for this exploration, and individuals with insecure attachment tend to have more limited abilities for self reflection, mentalization and empathy.

Attachment theory suggests that the relational patterns children exhibit with caregivers persevere into adulthood, and become the mold for relationships with romantic partners and children. Insecure attachment is strongly correlated with many mental health issues as well as relational difficulties and dissatisfaction.