Rather than forming instant bonds at birth, babies build connections through distinct stages of social development. This post summarises Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson’s 1964 study, which investigated when early attachments form, how and why they form, and whether babies bond with a single attachment figure or many.

---

Schaffer and Emerson (1964)

• Method: A longitudinal observational study conducted in the participants’ homes.
• Participants: 60 working-class infants and their mothers from Glasgow, Scotland.
• Duration: Tracked infants every 4 weeks for the first year of life, with a final follow-up at 18 months.
• Data Collection:
  • Interviews & Diaries: Mothers reported the baby’s responses to everyday separations (e.g., being left alone in a room).
  • Direct Observation: Researchers observed the baby’s reactions to strangers.
• Key Variables Measured:
  • Separation Anxiety: Distress when separated from a primary figure (signalling attachment).
  • Stranger Anxiety: Distress around unfamiliar people.

Findings

4 stages of attachment

By analysing their observational data alongside the mothers’ detailed diaries, Schaffer and Emerson identified common behavioural changes over the 18 month study, which they categorised as four core stages of attachment:

Pre-attachment (Birth – 3 months)	From a very early stage, babies enjoy the company of other people and prefer humans over objects and other non-human things. However, the baby is not able to tell the difference between different human faces.
Indiscriminate attachment (3 months – ~8 months)	After about 3 months, the baby can tell the difference between different human faces and starts to prefer familiar ones. However, the baby does not mind unfamiliar faces and will allow a stranger to handle them without getting upset.
Specific attachment (~8 months onwards)	From about 7 or 8 months, the baby’s attachment to its primary caregiver (e.g. its mother) is particularly strong. The baby demonstrates separation anxiety (distress from being away from its primary caregiver) and a fear of strangers.
Multiple attachments (~10 months onwards)	After around 9 or 10 months, the infant will begin forming attachments to other familiar faces, such as grandparents and other children. However, the strongest emotional attachment is with the primary caregiver (usually the mother).

Sensitive Responsiveness Over Physical Care

Schaffer and Emerson’s main finding from these stages was that sensitive responsiveness is what drives attachment, not physical care. In other words, a baby’s primary bond formed with whoever responded most accurately to their needs and interacted with them (e.g. playing, communicating, and responding quickly to cries) regardless of who provided food or clean clothes.

In fact, for 39% of infants, the primary attachment figure was not the person who physically cared for or fed them most often.

This finding challenges the simple learning theory explanation of attachment (AKA the ‘cupboard love theory’) which assumed that babies bond with caregivers simply because they associate the pleasant sensation of being fed with the presence of the caregiver who feeds them.

Multiple attachments are common

Rather than relying on a single caregiver, the data showed that babies rapidly build a network of relationships:

• 29% of infants formed secondary attachments within just one month of forming their primary bond (at around 10 months old)
• 87% of infants had formed multiple attachments by 18 months (including fathers, grandparents, and siblings
• 31% of infants had five or more attachment figures by the end of the study.

This challenged John Bowlby’s monotropic theory of attachment – the idea that babies form one single and unique attachment that stands above all others. Instead, Schaffer and Emerson showed that babies naturally form an attachment hierarchy: one main primary figure (usually the mother at 65%), supported by a strong ring of secondary figures.

Evaluation

Strengths of Schaffer and Emerson (1964):

• High ecological validity: The study took place in the babies’ own homes during standard daily routines. Because the babies were in familiar surroundings behaving naturally, the findings are more likely to accurately reflect real-life attachment behaviours.
• Longitudinal design: By tracking the same 60 infants over 18 months rather than taking a cross-sectional snapshot, Schaffer and Emerson directly observed developmental changes over time, eliminating individual differences as a confounding variable.
• Practical applications: Proving that sensitive responsiveness drives attachment – and that multiple attachments are normal – helped shift historical childcare views. It provided empirical support for daycare centres, paternal care, and shared parenting responsibilities.

Weaknesses of of Schaffer and Emerson (1964):

• Self-report bias: Much of the data relied on the mother’s diaries and interviews, which may be biased or inaccurate. For example, mothers may have missed subtle behaviours, forgotten details, or altered their reports to appear like better caregivers, compromising data validity.
• Cultural bias: The sample consisted exclusively of 60 working-class infants from Glasgow in the 1960s. As such, the findings may only reflect the child-rearing practices of that particular culture at that particular time. For example, child-rearing practices in a Western individualist country cannot necessarily be easily generalised to collectivist cultures where multiple shared caregivers are standard from birth.
• Low temporal validity: Conducted in 1964, the findings reflect an era when mothers were predominantly stay-at-home caregivers and fathers were primary breadwinners. Today, female employment rates are significantly higher and stay-at-home fathers are more common. As such, attachment patterns and timeframes of babies in 1960s Glasgow can’t necessarily be generalised to babies in Glasgow in the 2020s.