The Role of Maternal Attachment Styles in Children’s Sleeping Habits, Feeding, and Adjustment to Nursery

Research over the last fifty years has shown that the security and emotional stability experienced by an infant in the first year of life have an impact on the individual’s entire life, on how they respond to stressful situations, on how they raise their own children, on the dynamics of their relationships, and on their general psychological and physical state. That is why it is so important that today’s generation of adults be able to consciously develop the parenting style that will lead to more securely attached children growing up. Such a change would be a huge step forward in healthy psychological functioning; however, it would also require the individual to confront his or her own maladaptive functioning and attachment difficulties. According to my hypothesis, mothers with a secure attachment style are more likely to be responsive in parenting, and they are more supportive of their children during the separation period than those with anxious and dismissive attachment styles. The online questionnaire survey involved 113 respondents. One part of the questionnaire concerned the parenting practices used by the respondents in the first year of their children’s lives; another part concerned their experiences of settling in. In addition, the Adult Attachment Scale (AAS) questionnaire was used to measure mothers’ attachment styles. The results show that mothers’ attachment styles affect both their responsiveness and their emotional and behavioral mechanisms during the separation of their children.