Inheriting Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation: Questions of Legacy, Authority, and Methodology for Contemporary Developmental Attachment Researchers

Abstract

Mary Ainsworth’s legacy continues to shape the social and developmental sciences well after her death. The Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure has, for decades, not only provided the underpinning methodology of attachment research, but also the frame of reference for theory. This has produced conditions where, as in psychoanalysis, debates about the future of the paradigm also entail a struggle to claim and negotiate the legacy of a founding figure. To date, historians have only looked at attachment research up to the 1980s. Interviews with 15 leading contemporary attachment researchers revealed Ainsworth’s importance to later research, but also laid bare the challenges of claiming her inheritance in responding to the current challenges facing this area of research.

A “transmission gap” between research and practice? A Q-methodology study of perceptions of the application of attachment theory among clinicians working with children and among attachment researchers

“…This may account for the differential take up (50% of invited developmentalists vs 20% of invited social psychologists) and the relatively small number of social psychologists who completed the study (n = 5). Similarly, a recent interview study conducted by Spies and Duschinsky ( 2021 ) invited 39 researchers across both traditions. Fifteen agreed to be interviewed, all of whom were developmentalists.…”

The Perspectives of Senior Researchers in Applied Disciplines on the Current State of Developmental Attachment Research: An Interview Study

“…The study was led by two social scientists, the first two authors, without ties to attachment research, but with consultation and support from Pasco Fearon, Carlo Schuengel and Sheri Madigan as well as from Robbie Duschinsky and his research group, who have conducted previous work studying attachment research from a sociological perspective (e.g., Spies & Duschinsky, 2021). The goal in having non-attachment researchers conduct the interviews was to increase the likelihood that participants would feel comfortable openly discussing their views on the attachment field.…”

Infant and preschool attachment, continuity and relationship to caregiving sensitivity: findings from a new population‐based Australian cohort

“…McIntosh, Tan, Levendosky, & Holtzworth‐Munroe, 2021; Śliwerski, Kossakowska, Jarecka, Świtalska, & Bielawska‐Batorowicz, 2020), normative community estimates remain rare. This is perhaps of little surprise, given the resource‐intensive nature of reliable assessments of attachment, which depend on time‐consuming and expensive observations under set conditions, with specialist micro‐coding of child–parent interaction (Spies & Duschinsky, 2021).…”