their emotions with you. Last, the secure party engulfs his or her partner in
an emotionally protective shield that makes facing the outside world an
easier task. We often fail to realize what a bonus these attributes are unless
they’re missing. It’s no coincidence that the people most appreciative of a
secure relationship are those who’ve had relationships with both secure and
insecure partners. Though these people will tell you that secure and
insecure relationships are worlds apart, without the knowledge of
attachment theory, they too are unable to put their finger on what exactly
that difference is.
WHERE DOES THIS “TALENT” COME FROM?
If you are secure, are you born with this exceptional capacity or is it
something you learn along the way? John Bowlby believed that attachment
styles are a function of life experience—especially of our interaction with
our parents during infancy. A person will develop a secure attachment style
if her parents are sensitive and responsive to her needs. Such a child will
learn that she can rely on her parents, confident that they’ll be available to
her whenever she needs them. But Bowlby maintained that it didn’t end
there; he believed a secure child would carry this confidence into adulthood
and future relationships with romantic partners.
Does the evidence support these predictions? In 2000, Leslie Atkinson,
who conducts child development research at Ryerson University in Toronto,
in collaboration with several other colleagues, conducted a meta-analysis
that was based on forty-one prior studies. In total, the study analyzed over
two thousand parent-child pairs to evaluate the connection between parent
sensitivity and child attachment style. The results showed a weak but
significant link between the two—children of mothers who were sensitive
to their needs were more likely to have a secure attachment style, but the
weak link means that, aside from methodological issues, there could be
many other variables that come into play to determine a child’s attachment
style. Among the factors that were found to increase a child’s chance of
being secure were an easy temperament (which makes it easier for parents
to be responsive), positive maternal conditions—marital satisfaction, low