Attachment Theory and Child Abuse

Alan Challoner MA (Phil) MChS

ABSTRACT

Child abuse is seen to follow a general pattern and it is the intrusion of fear into what
might otherwise be good enough care-giving that is necessary for the development
of a disorganised or disoriented attachment. Research has shown that in the case
of the rejected infant only one signal is required to throw the child into conflict.
Withdrawal tendencies occur as a result of main carer’s threat. This paper seeks to
find some reasons for the perpetuation of abuse through the generations, and draws
attention to the potential remedies.
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In recent years research has shown that the revealed characteristics of abusing
parents and abused children fit the pattern of attachment disorders. Fontana has
drawn attention to a ‘maltreatment syndrome’, in which child abuse is seen to follow
a general pattern. 1 DeLozier describes this pattern of dependent, fearful, anxious,
hostile, and depressed behaviour consistently found in abusing families, as well as
parent-child rôle reversal and the generational pattern of abuse, as reflecting
dysfunctional attachment and care-taking behavioural systems in these families. 2
She describes the literature as reflecting varying degrees of anxious attachment and
detachment resulting from actual or persistently threatened disruption of
attachments. The intense separation anxiety, dysfunctional anger, distrust of others
and the environment, and restraints on the development of self-reliant behaviour
that are known to accompany attachment disorders are reflected in the consistent
description of abusing parents and children as dependent, depressed, angry,
anxious, isolated, hyper-alert, and distrustful.
Main and Hesse 3 have suggested that it is the intrusion of fear into what might
otherwise be good enough care-giving that is necessary for the development of a
disorganised or disoriented attachment. Fear is obviously a common experience for
physically and emotionally abused children. They suggest it is also probable that
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there are frightening aspects of emotional and physical neglect. As Main and Hesse
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have described, the concurrent activation of the fear or wariness and attachment

1 Fontana, V. J. The maltreated child: The maltreatment syndrome in children. Springfield, Ill.:
Charles C. Thomas. 1971
2 Delozier. P. An application of attachment theory to the study of child abuse. [Ph.D.
dissertation], California School of Professional Psychology; 1979
3 Main, M.; & Hesse, E. Parents’ Unresolved Traumatic Experiences are Related to Infant
Disorganized Attachment Status: Is Frightened and/or Frightening Parental Behaviour the
Linking Mechanism? In Greenberg, M.T.; Cicchetti, D.; & Cummings, M. [Eds.] Attachment in the
Preschool Years: Theory, Research & Intervention. Univ. Chicago Press, 1990.
behavioural systems produce strong conflicting motivations when approaching the
care-givers for comfort and they may feel the need to retreat from them to safety.
Proximity seeking mixed with avoidance causes frustration and stress and if the
approach tendencies equal the avoidance tendencies they will inhibit one another.
Ainsworth has indicated that in the case of the rejected infant only one signal is
required to throw the child into conflict. Withdrawal tendencies occur as a result of
mother’s threat signals and these lead directly to approach tendencies. The
connection between these opposing tendencies is internal to the attached infant
and has no reference to the circumstances. As the approach is forbidden, the
attachment behaviour system is still further activated but approach remains
forbidden. Thus there is conflict as vacillation between approach, avoidance and
angry behaviour occurs. The only solution is a shift of attention toward another
figure. 4 (Ainsworth, Idem, 1982)
A psychoanalytic view has been expressed by Fine when he writes:
For optimal child-rearing, what seems to count more than anything else is the maturity and
emotional health of the parent, and these depend on the inner structure of the family. 5

Petrovich and Gewirtz propose that exposure to biologically inappropriate stimuli

during social development may functionally isolate such an individual from a
reproductive population. Infanticide and serious infant abuse are likely to be
observed under stressful conditions of intensified reproductive pressure,
environmental ecological depletion, and/or where the mother’s mate is not the
infant’s biological father.
In some species, the striking features of distorted imprinting and attachment
processes provide a provocative demonstration of sexuality channelled in the
direction of the biologically inappropriate object. Forced separation from objects of
attachment has deleterious effects on avian and mammalian infant behaviour. If
separation is prolonged or leads to privation and deprivation, the consequences
may be even more severe. In monkeys and chimpanzees, isolation studies have
shown that appropriate early social experiences are essential for the normal
development of sexual activity. In turn, prolonged separation and deprivation may
progressively lead to depression and related withdrawal from social interactions.
Human data on the development of sexuality and gender identity, suggest also that
sexual phenotypes, as genetically programmed at the moment of conception, may
be radically modified and altered by “environmental” stimuli, such as chemical by-
products of other genes, hormones, or exposure during development to biologically
and psychologically inappropriate stimuli. (Fine, 1991)
Cicchetti & Barnett 6 and Schneider-Rosen et al.,7 have shown from their research
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that children at any age up to four years, who have been ill-treated by parents, are
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significantly more likely to show insecure patterns of attachment. Even those

4 Ainsworth, Mary D Salter. Attachment: Retrospect and Prospect. In Parkes, Colin Murray; &
Stevenson-Hinde, Joan. [Eds.] The Place of Attachment in Human Behaviour. Basic Books, New
York USA. 1982.
5 Fine, R. A History of Psychoanalysis. New York, USA, Columbia Univ. Press; 1979.
6 Cicchetti, D.; & Barnett, D. Attachment organization in maltreated pre-schoolers. Special Issue:
Attachment and developmental psychopathology. Develop. & Psychopath. 3(4); [pp., 397-
411]; 1991.
7 Schneider-Rosen, K.; Braunwald, K.G.; Carlson, V.; & Cicchetti, D. Current perspectives in
attachment theory: Illustration from the study of maltreated infants. Monographs of the Society
for Research in Child Development; 50(1-2); [pp., 194-210]; 1985.
children who might be securely attached in their early months are likely to lose that
at later assessments if they are ill-treated.
A similar line of enquiry was pursued by Youngblade and Belsky, when they
examined the link between the aetiology of child ill-treatment and later
development together with the attachment outcome. 8 As others have done, they
also found a strong association between ill-treatment of the child and attachment
insecurity. Another factor uncovered was the aberrant inter-peer relationship of
those who had been ill-treated. They emphasised the link between abuse in
childhood and later transgenerational abuse of their own children. The investigation
highlighted the urgency of intervention measures at a family level.
Several authors have reported comparable findings and Browne and Saqi extended
their conclusions to incorporate a suggestion that abused children were more likely
to show increased stranger anxiety and reduced exploratory behaviour. 9
Extending this work into separate domains, Aber & Allen 10, used three cohorts of
children aged from four to eight years. These were divided as to:
 ill-treated children (93),
 demographically matched non-ill-treated children from families receiving
welfare benefits (67),
 non-ill-treated children from middle-class families (30).

The three domains were:

 relationships with novel adults,
 effectance motivation,
 and cognitive maturity.
Assessments were made on ten dependent variables, and factorially analysed. Two
meaningful factors emerged:
 on a factor measuring secure readiness to learn in the company of novel adults;
ill-treated children scored lower than welfare children, who in turn scored less
than middle-class children;
 on a factor measuring outer-directedness; ill-treated children and welfare
children scored higher than middle-class children, but did not differ significantly
from each other.
From this it was suggested that maltreatment, occurring during early childhood,
disrupts the dynamic balance between the motivation to establish safe, secure
relationships with adults and the motivation to venture out to explore the world in a
competent fashion.
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Theoretically the development of such attachment pathology (anxious attachment

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and detachment) in a child’s attachment system could later become incorporated

8 Youngblade, L.M.; & Belsky, J. Child maltreatment, infant-parent attachment security, and
dysfunctional peer relationships in toddlerhood. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education;
9(2); [pp., 1-15]; 1989.
9 Browne, K.; & Saqi, S. Mother-infant interaction and attachment in physically abusing families.
Special Issue: Early child maltreatment. Jnl. Reprod. & Inf. Psychol.; 6(3); [pp., 163-182]; 1988.
10 Aber, J L.; & Allen, J.P. Effects of maltreatment on young children’s socio-emotional
development: An attachment theory perspective. Devlop. Psychol.; 23(3); 1987.
into the adult attachment and care-taker systems and would thus affect both the
development of parental behaviour and the development of attachment in the
next generation. Thus the transmission of abusive parent-child interaction could be
seen as resulting, to a great extent, from patterns of attachment dysfunction that
are perpetuated within the family.
DeLozier (1979) reports the results of a research project in which a group of abusing
mothers were compared to a comparable group of non-abusing mothers. There
was a clear pattern of severe attachment disorders in the group of eighteen
abusing mothers as compared with another group of eighteen typical mothers. The
difficulties appeared to originate from threatened disruption of attachments, as well
as severe discipline in early childhood; to have been influential in the childbirth
experience of the mothers; and to be manifested at the time of the project, both in
their general expectations of significant others and in their pattern of response, to
projected separation from attachment figures.
In her summary DeLozier interpreted the analysis of the data collected in her study
as indicating that in childhood the abusing mothers experienced severe threats of
abandonment and harm. The children’s self-expectations and possibly parental
expectations were that they should care for their parents and this added to a
general uncertainty as to the availability of significant others.
Their histories contain some indicators of childhood disruptive events such as family
problems causing a parent to leave home, though not permanently. During
childhood the abusing mothers appear to have had to watch constantly for
indications of impending separation and other threats to care-taking. In adulthood
there is evidence that they viewed significant others as being generally inaccessible.
They appeared not to have developed adequate internal representations of
attachment figures and other significant individuals as reliable and accessible.
Furthermore, the abusing mothers indicated that, at the time of the birth of the later-
abused child, they were generally fearful, felt alone and unsafe, and were
dissatisfied with the availability of significant others. Thus it appears likely that the
abusing mothers were handicapped by their own attachment difficulties in their
initial steps toward maternal care-taking.
She believed that all of the results were consistent with the present manifestations of
attachment difficulties as assessed by the Separation Anxiety Test. On this test the
abusing mothers indicated a high current level of attachment disorder, primarily
anxious attachment, but with some tendency toward detachment as well. Thus the
abusing mothers in the study demonstrated their overall sensitivity to separation,
especially mild separation, and their feelings of helplessness anxiety, and anger in
response to significant separation experiences.
DeLozier suggest that these findings support the prediction that the abusing mothers
in the study have experienced difficulty in their childhood attachments and in the
development of internal representations of significant others as accessible and
reliable, resulting in consequent adult attachment difficulties as well as in possible
difficulties in the development of appropriate care-taking behaviour.
There are implications that DeLozier perceives from her research and she summarises
them as follows:
The pattern of attachment dysfunction found in the abusing mothers in this research suggests
the attachment-related origin of at least some of the inappropriate parenting directed toward
their children. The dysfunctional development of anger and anxiety are two components of
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anxious attachment, especially if the expression of anger has been prohibited by the child’s
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fear of precipitating loss of care-taking. Once anxious attachment has developed, separation
 signals can trigger expression of intense anxiety and anger. It seems possible that abusing
mothers, who exhibit a high degree of sensitivity to separation from significant others, interpret
the normal behaviour of their children as if it were actual or threatened rejection. If so, these
mothers would be likely to respond to such a misapprehension with dysfunctional levels of
anxiety and anger and with feelings of rejection, self-blame, and helplessness. Not only could
the child’s normal exploratory behaviour elicit such a response, but even such behaviour as
normal crying could function as a danger signal to the anxiously attached mother. Thus the
attachment-related response of the mother may result in the inappropriate direction of anxiety
and anger toward the child who, owing to the expectations that the mother maintains
regarding attachment figures that they will be inaccessible and unreliable.
Furthermore, the development of competence in a child depends not only on the parent’s
appropriate response to his attachment behaviour, but also on encouragement of the child’s
increasing self-reliance. If the parent, however, responds to normal parent-child separation
with intense levels of anxiety or anger, increased attachment need, decreased self-reliance,
and feelings of rejection, the parent will be more than likely to discourage the child’s
exploratory and self-reliant behaviour, especially in inverted parent-child relationships, thereby
even further hampering the child’s development. (Idem, 1982)

In a later study, Crittenden assessed what the differences were between ill-treated
and adequately reared infants, whether they existed at birth, and if the differences
could be positively changed. She devised two experiments:
EXPERIMENT 1 Thirty-eight low socio-economic scale infants, aged from one to 19
months, were assessed in terms of:
 congenital abnormalities,
 mother-child interactions,
 developmental delay.

The thirty-eight mothers of these infants, aged 15 to 49 years, were classified as:
 abusing (8),
 neglecting (10),
 problematic (10),
 adequate (10).

EXPERIMENT 2 Seventy-three low socio-economic scale infants, aged from two to 24

months, were similarly assessed, but in addition their pattern of attachment to their
mother was also assessed, as was a change in their pattern of interaction when the
sensitivity of a second adult was experimentally manipulated. Their mothers, aged
13 to 35 years, were classified as:
 abusing (17),
 neglecting (21),
 problematic (22),
 adequate (13)

The results gave evidence that:

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 the mother initiates the maltreatment but both mother and infant behave
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thereafter to maintain the situation;

 the ill-treated subjects did not differ from adequately reared subjects in
congenital characteristics;
 however the ill-treated subjects displayed some differences in characteristics that
could have been affected by environmental conditions;
 the abused subjects were difficult, mildly delayed, and angry when stressed;
 the neglected subjects tended to be passive, significantly delayed, and
somewhat helpless when stressed.
When intervention procedures were introduced with the mothers, ill-treated subjects
showed developmental gains and began to behave more co-operatively in their
interactions. 11
It is important to understand how abused children react when they are placed into
the care of alternative adults following abuse at home. Howes & Segal investigated
this situation with 16 children who had been removed from their homes owing to
abuse and, or, neglect. It was found that the children were just as likely to form
insecure and particularly insecure-avoidant, attachment relations with the
alternative care-givers as might be expected had they remained at home. The
subjects did vary in their attachment behaviour depending upon the particular
care-giver, and the attachment classifications were inconcordant. This
approximated to a division between the more sensitive and less-detached care-
givers on morning sessions, than with the lesser motivated afternoon care-givers. The
highest secure scores on attachment was directly related to the longest placement
with the more sensitive care-givers. 12
In conclusion, an attachment theory view of child abuse calls for the early detection
of attachment disorders in both parent and child, assessment of the extent of
attachment dysfunction in high-risk families, and intervention with abusive families to
reduce separation anxiety and support the more adequate development of
attachment bonds. In this regard, for example, the common practice of removal of
the child from the home warrants careful inspection. Although sometimes
mandatory for the child’s protection, such an intervention further strains the poorly
developed attachment relationships within the family and further adversely affects
the development of attachment and self-reliance in the child. Moreover, if the child
is to be returned home eventually, separation in and of itself will serve to activate
attachment behaviours upon reunion that further stress parent-child relations,
possibly eliciting further abuse.
Crittenden’s work that suggests that some ill-treated infants actively contribute to
their own misery needs careful consideration and checking. If this outcome is
comprehensively established then it has relevance in adult situations. In particular it
might be asked whether spouse abuse is a continuation of this effect, albeit in
another attachment relationship.
From the attachment theory perspective, therefore, efforts should be made to:
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11 Crittenden, P.M. Maltreated infants: Vulnerability and resilience. Jnl. Child Psychol. & Psychiat.
& Allied Discp. 26(1); [pp., 85-96]; 1985.
12 Howes, C.; & Segal, J. Children’s relationships with alternative care-givers: The special case of
maltreated children removed from their homes. Jnl. Appl. Develop. Psychol.; 14(1); [pp., 71-
81]; 1993.
 direct child-abuse treatment to the family unit where possible, with the child
either remaining in the home under close supervision or with frequent, prolonged
contact between parent and child during separation;
 provide interventions in abusive and potentially abusive families that support the
development of attachment bonds in children and remedy attachment
dysfunctions in both children and adults; and
 direct attention toward the provision of support to all parents in their rôle as care-
givers, thus enabling them to provide more reliable and accessible care-giving to
their children.

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For Want of a Better Good
Author: Alan Challoner MA (Phil) MChS
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