Content area
Full Text
I. Introduction - Attachment
The concept of attachment can readily tip the scales in custody and parenting-time cases involving infants and young children. Unfortunately, attachment is often incompletely understood in both the legal and mental health communities. Attorneys may vaguely associate "attachment" with ideas about tender years, psychological parents, and primary caretakers.1 Mental-health professionals may misremember key concepts of attachment theorists, or lack time to update their knowledge of current research.2 Attorneys and psychologists are frequently not talking about the same thing, complicating communications. This article explores basic attachment theory and research, attempts to clarify some of the confusion about the terms and their applications, and offers guidance on the proper use of attachment concepts in custody cases.
Most broadly, attachment theory describes "the propensity of human beings to make strong affectional bonds to particular others. . ."3 In particular, the theory holds that young children attach to their parents, usually their mothers, and that their later functioning can be explained by the quality of this attachment. Attachment theory appeals as an intuitive, almost romantic theory that has very much captured the imagination of a significant group of mental health professionals in the United States and many other parts of the world. Although numbers of mental health professionals espouse a more moderate view,4 many have promoted strict attachment theory and advocated its benefits in court.5 These professionals tell courts that mothers who are afforded the opportunity to care for their infants will most often raise well-adjusted children who grow into well-functioning adults. Those unfortunate infants with insufficient access to their mothers are said to risk problems making close relationships and even in nurturing their own children.6 Not surprisingly, these mental health professionals often advocate continuity of a child's "primary" attachment figure when parents divorce, which almost invariably requires placement with the mother. Equally expected, courts have frequently been unwilling to question such compelling mental health advice, opting for a conservative approach to avoid risking a young child's future by compromising attachment.7 In this way, attachment concepts have come to approach a determinative status when custody decisions are made for very young children.
Judges might be surprised to learn that some of these ideas arise more from intuition than from science.8 Attachment research is evolving...