Long Term Effects of Attachment
The Securely Attached Child
According to multiple studies, children who have developed a secure attachment style at an early age grow to develop strong social skills and healthy, fulfilling friendships and relationships as they age. Dr. Sears’ organization describes their findings that attachment parenting started early in life tends to lead to what they call the “Six Childhood C’s”—children are observed to be Caring, Compassionate, Connected, Careful, Confident, and parents themselves are Confident about their parenting skills. These children develop an inner sense of comfort and security as early as toddlerhood. They are also open to redirection from adults in their behavior and strive to be well behaved in order to please parents and other caregivers (Sears).
Once school begins, these children have well developed social skills and are good at cooperation, thus they tend to get along well with other children and in many cases are very popular with their peers. The exhibit empathy and enjoy helping others, both friends and adults. They are curious about learning and tend to achieve high marks academically in addition to being willing to ask for help from adults when they feel it is needed. These children also tend to have high self-esteem, are comfortable expressing affection and their general emotions, and have a well developed sense of right and wrong (Sears). According to the longitudinal study mentioned above, in early school years these children’s social skills were rated as highly developed by their teachers, and around age sixteen they tended to have a larger number of intimate friendships (Simpson et.al., 2007).
When Simpson, et. al.’s study revisited the securely attached children in their early twenties to examine their romantic relationships, these individuals as well as their partners were found to have more positivity overall in their daily interactions. These couples were also fairly adept at resolving conflicts and cooperating on tasks without developing negative feelings towards each other. As adults, Dr. Sears found that the previously-securely-attached children were considerably more likely to have satisfying marriages. In addition to this, they were considerably less prone to addictive behaviors such as alcoholism and drug abuse, they did not tend to have difficulties with aggression or violence, and then were described as more psychologically stable overall.
Although with dedication and support, attachment styles can technically be altered at any stage, not only is secure attachment easier to foster in young children, but it tends to foreshadows greater ease and wellbeing in all the following stages of development, continuing on into adulthood.
The Insecurely Attached Child
Children who do not develop secure attachment during early childhood are most often found to have social difficulties throughout the rest of their development and up into early adulthood. Dr. William Sears, MD, who some claim to be the man most responsible for the development of Attachment Parenting (a way of parenting geared toward fostering secure attachment in children), reports a number of characteristics often observed in insecurely attached children as they grow:
– Misbehavior/receive constant reprimands (school & home)
– Constant dissociation or ‘tuning out’
– Aggressive and/or manipulative behavior towards others
– Bullying or easily bullied
– Defensive response to authority figures (teachers, parents, etc.)
– Unwilling to share
– Shunned by peers
– Shallow later friendships
– Less curious or more hesitant to learn
– Difficulties with empathy
– Distrust of adults leading to not asking for help when needed
– Low Self-Confidence
– Difficulties regulating emotions (example: calming self down when upset)
Dr. Sears’ research also found that insecurely attached adults were morally immature, still having difficulty understanding the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ There were also links found between severe levels of insecure attachment and later addictive tendencies as well as violence and sociopathic behaviors (Sears).
Another recent study found similar results. Researchers followed 78 individuals from infancy through their early twenties, studying the subjects’ attachment styles during infancy and then periodically checking in on them at several points deemed as pivotal points of development. It was found that social proficiency at one level tended to predict proficiency for the next level. Thus, insecurely attached infants were mostly found to be lacking in social competence in early childhood, had a fewer number of intimate friendships around age 16, and in their romantic relationships in their early twenties experienced less positive emotions and more negativity when trying to resolve conflicts or cooperate with partners on tasks (Simpson, Collins, Tran, & Haydon, 2007).
Insecurely attached children often come across as being difficult or irritable, as they are unsure of how to connect on a warm, intimate level with parents early on and thus often try to do so by acting out. Parents understandably don’t want to encourage what is seen as misbehavior and tend to distance themselves. This leads to insecurely attached children constantly finding themselves ignored, reprimanded or shunned when trying to reach out for connection. This tends to snowball with time as these individuals become more and increasingly unsure about how to relate to others as they age (Sears).
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