One of the hands down most amazing things about being the mam of young children is seeing how happy they always are to see you.
And much as this is obviously a confident booster for us parents; knowing that they do indeed feel happier when we are near them, it is also, according to science, an important marker for how attached babies feel to their caregiver.
According to groundbreaking new research from Bethany Saltman of New York magazine, how your little one responds to you leaving and re-entering a room could hold signal a certain “attachment style” that will follow your child for the rest of their life.
In fact, experts now believe that attachment style, or the level of security and closeness a child feels with his or her caregiver, is more important to a person’s lifelong development than IQ, social class, and even temperament.
To discern different attachment styles and what each one means, researchers observed a participating mother and her 1-year-old for 20 minutes through a one-way mirror. The mother was instructed to exit the room, leaving her purse behind as a sign of eventual return, while the researchers observed the child’s reaction. After a few minutes, the mother was instructed to re-enter the room.
“Reunion 2,” as the researchers termed it, was the most important moment: If a child reacts nonchalantly or not at all, this could indicate that the child knows his or her advances will be rebuffed, or that the relationship is insecure. The problem? This sort of “attachment anxiety,” which can be detected in children ages one and younger, has been linked to depression, anxiety, and unsuccessful marriages in adulthood.
Yikes.
What is even more interesting (or terrifying, depending how you look at it) is that attachment styles can be passed down from generation to generation. Meaning, if a mother was raised in an insecure attachment style, for example, chances are that she will, however unintentionally, raise her children in a similar manner.
