Insecure Attachment

Insecure attachment describes patterns of infant-caregiver bonding, identified through Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure, in which a child does not show the confident exploration and easy comfort-seeking seen in securely attached children. Ainsworth distinguished an anxious-resistant pattern, in which children are distressed even before separation and hard to soothe on the caregiver's return, from an anxious-avoidant pattern, in which children appear to ignore the caregiver despite evidence that the calm is masking distress; later researchers added a disorganized pattern marked by contradictory or fearful behavior toward the caregiver. The patterns are understood to reflect a history of inconsistent or unresponsive caregiving rather than a fixed trait of the child.