Mary Ainsworth: biography of this psychologist and researcher

Mary Ainsworth was one of the most important American psychologists of the 20th century.

The reconciliation of work and family life is particularly complicated, especially for women. Although steps are currently being taken to make these two spheres compatible, there is still a long way to go. Her struggle began many years ago with Mary Ainsworth.

Ainsworth was an American psychologist who supported this struggle more than 70 years ago. She also made other contributions, such as the theory of attachment, through The Strange Situation. In this article we will summarize a biography of Mary Ainsworth and a review of her contributions.

Mary Ainsworth: biography of this North American psychologist.

Mary Ainsworth was an American psychologist born in Glendale, Ohio, in December 1913. She entered the University of Toronto in 1929 and graduated in 1935. She is considered a pioneer in attachment studies and, consequently, in attachment theory.. On the other hand, she was also interested in aspects of women and the human being, which until then had been relegated to the background.

At the same time, she was one of the most influential and cited psychologists during the 20th century, despite the fact that in her time women's professional role was very restricted. Today her contributions continue to be a pillar on which to build more studies in psychology.

Life and career

Mary Ainsworth was born in the United States, but her family moved to Toronto her family moved to Toronto, Canada, when she was a child.. She graduated in Developmental Psychology at the University of Toronto and obtained her PhD in 1939. At the end of her studies, she joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps; she spent four years in the army and reached the rank of Major.

After a few years she married and moved to London with her husband. Then began working at the Tavistock Institute with psychiatrist John Bowlby.. The two started a research path based on the separation experiences of children with their attachment figures or caregivers.

In 1953 she moved to Uganda and began working at the African Institute of Social Research in Kampala, where she continued her research on children's early relationships with their mothers.

Some time later a position at the John Hopkins Institute in the United States and, later, at the University of Virginia, where he continues to develop his theory of attachment.where she continues to develop her attachment theory until 1984, when she retires professionally.

Finally, Mary Ainsworth died in 1999, at the age of 86, after a lifetime dedicated to developing and researching one of the most important psychological theories available today.

Attachment theory

Mary Ainsworth developed together with John Bowlby one of the most important psychological theories for the understanding of early social development: attachment theory. This theory was initially formulated with children in mind, although Mary Ainsworth later (in the 1960s and 1970s) introduced new concepts, and finally in the 1980s extended the theory to adults as well.

In order to study attachment, she designed the strange situation, which we will see in detail in the following lines.

The strange situation

Mary Ainsworth is known, among many other contributions, for designing in 1978 with her collaborators "The Strange Situation": it was a laboratory procedure to study attachment in infancy. a laboratory procedure to study attachment in infancy.. It consisted of establishing two episodes of separation between the child and his/her caregiver (usually the mother) in order to analyze the type of attachment of the child, through his/her attitude and exploration behavior under stressful conditions (separation).

Specifically, Mary Ainsworth and her collaborators studied children between 10 and 24 months of age, through 8 episodes involving separations and rejections. involving separations and reunions with mothers, as well as the presence of a stranger in some of them. in some of them.

From this experiment, they classified the children's attachment according to their behavior during the separation, as well as their attitude during the reunion with the mother.

The results obtained suggested classifying attachment into four types: secure attachment, anxious-avoidant attachment, anxious-ambivalent-resistant attachment, and disorganized/disoriented attachment. Let's see what each of these types of attachment consists of:

1. Secure attachment

This is the most common attachment (it appears in 65% of children). It implies the child actively explores when the mother is present (secure base), and becomes uneasy when separated from the mother.. Finally, the child is affectionate when the mother returns.

2. Avoidant, rejecting or flighty attachment

Appears in 20% of cases. The child shows little discomfort in the separation, avoids and ignores the mother when she returns, is angry and does not look for her when she needs her.The child is angry and does not look for her when he/she needs her. The exploratory behavior is active. These are children who can be very sociable with strangers.

3. Ambivalent or resistant attachment

It occurs in 10-12% of cases. This type of attachment characterizes children who explore little, who stay close to the mother, who are very restless during and before separation, and who are ambivalent upon the mother's return. They explore little and are difficult to reassure..

4. Disorganized-disoriented attachment

Appears in 3-5% of cases, and is the least secure pattern. Here the resistant and avoidant patterns are combined; inconsistent and contradictory behaviors appear.Inconsistent and contradictory behaviors appear.

The work of Mary Ainsworth

Mary Ainsworth emphasized the importance of developing a healthy maternal attachment relationship, that is, a healthy and secure attachment in the child. She also emphasized the influence that an insecure attachment could have on the child, as well as in adulthood.

According to Mary Ainsworth's attachment theory, one of the essential factors affecting attachment is the mother's sensitivity to her infant's needswhich is considered vital for the development of a secure attachment.

This psychologist has spoken out many times in favor of the need to implement programs to help women programs to help women to reconcile their professional careers with motherhood.. This was because at that time it was almost unthinkable that women could reconcile these two facets of their lives. That is why Mary Ainsworth is considered one of the forerunners of work-life balance programs for mothers. Thus, she was a researcher and at the same time vindictive, and she fought for women's rights in that sense, taking an interest in very important aspects for women, those that had always been left aside.

Bibliographical references:

• Main, M., and Hesse, E. (1992). Disorganized/disoriented infant behavior in the Strange Situation, lapses in the monitoring of reasoning and discourse during the parent’s Adult Attachment Interview, and dissociative states. In M. Ammaniti and D. Stern (Eds.), Attachment and psychoanalysis.
• Vasta, R.; Haith, M.M.; Miller, S.A. (2001). Psicología Infantil. Ed. Ariel. Barcelona.
• Papalia, D.E.; Olds, S.W.; Feldman, R.D. (2005). Psicología del desarrollo de la infancia a la adolescencia. McGraw-Hill. Madrid.
• Fonagy, P. (2008). Teoría del apego y psicoanálisis. Clínica y Salud, 19(1), 131-134.