Research over the last two decades, much of it pioneered by Minnesota scholars, has shaped a basic understanding of how very young children begin to develop secure, healthy lives. It has identified factors known to promote secure attachment, and factors known to place it at risk. Public policy affects these factors, and thereby plays a role in influencing families ability to provide for their children s healthy development in all arenas of functioning, including intellectual, emotional, social, and physical. It is a two-way street, with each partner a vital and active player in its construction. The caregiver with whom the baby forms its first attachment is usually, but not always, the mother.
Children can form more than one attachment.
Secure attachments with non-parent caregivers are healthy for children s development, and do not threaten the child s attachment to its own parent unless that relationship was insecure to begin with. A secure attachment develops when a young child experiences sensitive, predictable interactions with its caregiver. From this foundation a young child develops a sense of trust, both in its caregiver to respond to its needs, and also in its own competence to elicit needed responses. This sense of trust and competence enables a child to explore its world, to relate to others, and to be open to learning. The attachment relationship becomes the child s expectation for how the world works and relates to him or her, and thus shapes the way the child reaches out to the world.6 Secure attachment typically leads to more confidence, curiosity, persistence, self-control, empathy, social skills, communication skills, trust, and cooperation at all stages of life.