Parent-baby attachment

Duncan Fisher discusses with Professor Michael Lamb, a leading child development psychologist at Cambridge University, how babies attach to their parents. Michael Lamb makes the point that babies form bonds with both parents at the same time in the first year. A stronger bond is associated more with the time spent with the baby than the gender of the parent per se, but encouragingly, he makes the point that a bond forms even if the time spent with the child is relatively little - an hour a day or every other day even. Though we don't know yet what "enough" parenting is, we do know that being regular, reliable and loving are important. Michael Lamb rejects the popular notion that mothers form bonds first and fathers get their opportunity only later. Duncan Fisher and Michael Lamb talk about how parents can lose all their confidence, especially before they have learned from experience. For mothers this can be difficult because they are under a big expectation to be perfect. For fathers it can be difficult because they can feel that they are useless because they are men and there is nothing they can ever do about it.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• attachment
• postnatal
• relationships
• couples
• babies
• fathers
• mothers
• family
• children