Maternal sensitivity and attachment: softening the impact of early adversity.

D onald Winnicott, Daniel Stern, John Bowlby, and other relational theorists have emphasized the critical importance of the early caregiving relationships in shaping child development. Their developmental theories have emphasized that the primary caregiving relationship not only influences the child’s behavior but also sculpts the foundation for the child’s future interpersonal relationships and eventually the child’s relationship with his or her own offspring. Mary Ainsworth’s seminal work used these theories to operationalize the construct of attachment security, thereby permitting experimental evaluations of this relationship. Using clearly defined measurements, attachment security was linked to maternal sensitivity, the understanding of and responding to a child’s needs. Subsequent research then demonstrated the association between attachment security and multiple facets of child development. Studies have demonstrated how parents represent their own childhood attachment relationships predict their attachment to their own child. Perhaps more importantly, this retrospective representation of their own experience as a child predicted how their child understood complex emotions at 6 years of age. Although it is clear that parenting is affected by early life experiences, only recently have studies begun to examine the neurobiological mechanisms and pathways involved in parenting. Defining these mechanisms offers insight not only into the impact on the child’s behavior but also a child’s physiology. i