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Attachment in Chronically Underweight Young Children
Author(s) -
Valenzuela Marta
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb03580.x
Subject(s) - underweight , psychology , strange situation , developmental psychology , population , insecure attachment , pediatrics , demography , clinical psychology , attachment theory , medicine , overweight , obesity , sociology
This study, conducted in Chile with a low‐income population, was designed to assess quality of mother‐infant attachment in 17–21‐month‐old children of different nutritional status. 43 nutritionally healthy and 42 chronically underweight children were seen with their mothers in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Children were classified in the conventional B (secure) and A and C (anxious) attachment patterns. In addition, an A/C pattern of anxious attachment was found to be frequent among children who consistently fail to gain adequate weight‐for‐age. Results showed a greater proportion (93%) of anxious attachments in the underweight group as compared to the group of children without a history of nutritional deficits (50%). Children classified as A/C presented the most serious weight deficits within the underweight group, indicating an association between severity of the nutritional deficits and insecure/disorganized attachments. Various hypotheses concerning the association between chronic nutritional deficits and insecure/disorganized attachments in infancy are discussed.