Overnights Away From Home Affect Children’s Attachments

http://news.virginia.edu/content/overnights-away-home-affect-children-s-attachments-study-shows

July 18, 2013
Fariss Samarrai, University of Virginia

Babies have an innate biological need to be attached to caregivers, usually their parents. But what happens when babies spend a night or more per week away from a primary caregiver, as increasingly happens in cases where the parents share custody, but do not live together?

In a new national study, University of Virginia researchers found that infants who spent at least one night per week away from their mothers had more insecure attachments to the mother compared to babies who had fewer overnights or saw their fathers only during the day.

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Attachments are defined as an enduring, deep, emotional connection between an infant and caregiver that develops within the child’s first year of life, according to Samantha Tornello, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate in psychology in U.Va.’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

Attachments during that critical first year serve as the basis for healthy attachments and relationships later in life, including adulthood, Tornello said.

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