The Patterns of Infant-Mother Attachment as a Function of Home Environment

Abstract

The present investigation was undertaken to assess the relationship between home environment and patterns of infant-mother attachment on a sample of 100 infants (12 to 24 months old) and their mothers enrolled from randomly selected urban middle income families of Ludhiana city. Infant-mother attachment was assessed by using Ainsworth Strange Situation Test (Ainsworth 1978). HOME inventory by Caldwell and Bradley (1984) was used to observe the home environment of the infants. The results revealed that all the infants were securely attached to the mother at the time of reunion although majority of them displayed low security of attachment. Infants experiencing low quality home environment but high acceptance of their behavior and more organized physical and temporal environment displayed more secured attachment to their mother than their counterparts having high quality home environment but low acceptance of their behavior and less organized physical and temporal environment. (authors)