How Insecure Attachment in Early Childhood Impact Romantic Attachments Later in Life Introduction to Psychology

How Insecure Attachment in Early Childhood Impact Romantic Attachments Later in Life
The fact that early childhood experiences have significant impacts on later human developments is undisputable. The childhood experiences account for adulthood differences in many aspects of life such as behavior, social skills, cognition, personality, emotional response and romantic relationships among others. Some psychoanalysts argue that early positive childhood experiences play a pivotal role in determining the long term developmental outcomes in adulthood. It also guarantees children protection against subsequent trauma. Early childhood experiences, especially those related to emotions or affection received from other people, induces a sense of organization or a pattern in structural growths that enhance and expand functional capabilities later in life. According to Amato & Keith (2001), these early childhood experiences cultivate development of unique characters and personalities, leading to thriving of adaptive capacities that build resistance of the individual against vulnerabilities and other forms of future pathologies. A certain empirical research revealed that, children, immediately after birth, are endowed with competence as well as social responsiveness and they are able to decipher what is in their environment that we can imagine. Contrary to people’s notion that infants are passive and that they only respond to environmental stimuli, recent studies have shown amazing behavioral abilities that infants have. During the first few minutes and hours of their lives, infants can hear, see and respond to rhythms of their mothers movements. A closer analysis of the relationship between children and their parents will help us to understand the effects that early childhood attachments have on their romantic lives later in their lives.
Attachments, defined as the emotional bond that individuals develop with their caregivers act as external regulation structures that have effects on child’s cognitive regulation. Young children, who do not have relationship with at least a single predictably available and emotionally involved caregiver, exhibit assortments of developmental deficits over time (Amato & Keith, 2001). For positive development to be achieved, the emotional attachment should be accompanied by prevailing physical protection and cognitive stimulation. Children, whose emotional ties develop intensely in presence of highly erratic, unresponsive, abusive and rejecting caregivers, can develop serious child impairment issues. In some instances, the bonding between the child and the mother can fail bringing serious consequences to the child’s life. At the center of these consequences lies affection psychopathy, a situation that makes the child’s adulthood life to be dominated by relationship sustainability difficulties, both normal and romantic relationships.
Children, who undergo insecure attachment relationships during their childhood rarely smile to their mothers, seem to ignore their presence even when they are together and they rate low when it comes to romantic relationships. Failure to cultivate secure attachment with children places their lives in pathway to relationship difficulties in their adult lives. As a result of insecure attachments between children and their caregivers, the child develops a sense of mistrust that can prevent her\he from leaving the caregivers side to explore the outer world and develop romantic capabilities.
Early attachments between children and their caregivers during early childhood have great effect in children’s romantic relationships later in their lives. The parenting patterns, whether adaptive or maladaptive, affected the children’s ability to form lasting romantic ties such as families in