Mary Ainsworth: biography of this psychologist and researcher

Reconciling work and family is especially difficult, especially for women. Although steps are currently being taken to make these two areas compatible, there is still a long way to go. Her fight began many years ago with Mary Ainsworth.

Ainsworth was an American psychologist who supported this fight more than 70 years ago. She also made other contributions, such as attachment theory, through The strange situation. In this article we will know in a summarized way a biography of Mary Ainsworth and a review of her contributions.

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Mary Ainsworth: biography of this 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 human beings, which until then had been relegated to the background.

She, in turn, was one of the most influential and cited psychologists during the twentieth century, despite the fact that at her time women had a very restricted professional role. At present, her contributions continue to be a pillar on which to build further studies in psychology.

Trajectory and life

Mary Ainsworth was born in America, but her family moved to Toronto, Canada when she was a child. She graduated in Developmental Psychology from the University of Toronto and obtained her Ph.D. from her in 1939. Upon completion 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 she starts working at the Tavistock Institute with psychiatrist John Bowlby. The two begin a path of investigation based on the experiences of separation of children with their attachment figures or caregivers.

In 1953 she moved to Uganda and began to work at the African Institute for Social Research in Kampala; there he continues his research on children's early relationships with their mothers.

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

Finally, Mary Ainsworth passed away in 1999, at the age of 86, after a lifetime she dedicated to developing and investigating one of the most important psychological theories that we have today in day.

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Attachment theory

Mary Ainsworth developed with John Bowlby one of the most important psychological theories for understanding early social development: attachment theory. This theory was initially formulated with a focus on children, although Mary Ainsworth, later (in the 60s and 70s) introduced new concepts, and finally in the 80s she extended the theory also to the Adults.

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 together with her collaborators "The Strange Situation": it was about a laboratory procedure to study attachment in infancy. It consisted of establishing two episodes of separation between the child and her caregiver (usually the mother) to analyze the type of attachment of the child, through the attitude and behavior of exploration of it under stress conditions (separation).

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

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

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

1. Secure attachment

It is the most common attachment (it appears in 65% of children). it implies that the child actively explores when the mother is present (safe base), and that she becomes uneasy at the separation. Finally, the child is affectionate when the mother returns.

2. Avoidant, rejecting, or elusive attachment

It appears in 20% of cases. Child shows little discomfort at separation, avoids and ignores mother when she returns, she is angry and does not seek her out when 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 their mother, who are very disturbing in the separation and before it, and that before the mother's return they show ambivalent. They explore little and are difficult to reassure.

4. Disorganized-disoriented attachment

It appears in 3-5% of cases, and it is the least certain pattern. Here resistant and avoidant patterns are combined; inconsistent and contradictory behaviors appear.

Mary Ainsworth's work

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

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

This psychologist spoke out many times in favor of the need to implement programs that will help women to reconcile their professional careers with their motherhood. This was so since 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 an investigator and at the same time vindictive, and she fought for the rights of women in that sense, taking an interest in aspects that are very important to women, those that had always been sideways.

Bibliographic 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). Child psychology. Ed. Ariel. Barcelona.
• Papalia, D.E.; Olds, S.W.; Feldman, R.D. (2005). Developmental psychology from childhood to adolescence. McGraw-Hill. Madrid.
• Fonagy, P. (2008). Attachment theory and psychoanalysis. Clinic and Health, 19 (1), 131-134.