PPT Slide
Are Attachment Representations Stable Across Phases of Development? Transitions to Marriage and to Parenting.
Dominique Treboux and Judith Crowell
Paper presented at SRCD, (April, 2001)
Beginning in infancy, ordinary secure base experience lead to expectations about self and close relationships. These expectations are elaborated and consolidated as formal mental representations that Bowlby termed “attachment working models” (Bowlby, 1980).
Attachment representations are expected to be stable enough to account for the effects of early experience on later attachment behavior, yet open to revision in light of new experiences. Hence, consistency in the caregiving environment contributes to their stability (Waters, Kondo-Ikemura, Posada, & Richters, 1991; Waters, Hamilton, & Weinfield, 2000). High stability in attachment patterns and representations has been found in normative samples (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 1993; Benoit & Parker, 1994; Waters, 1978; Waters, Merrick, Crowell, & Albersheim, 2000).
Much of the research explaining instability in attachment has focused on negative events that interrupt the consistency of care, that is, events that are unusual, unexpected, or uncontrollable, such as illness, parental death, and high stress (Vaughn, Egeland, Sroufe, & Waters, 1979; Waters, & al, 2000; Hamilton, 2000).