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Essentials when studying child-father attachment: A fundamental view on

safe haven and secure base phenomena

Article  in  Attachment & Human Development · March 2019

DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2019.1589056

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Karin Grossmann Klaus E. Grossmann

Universität Regensburg Universität Regensburg
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ATTACHMENT & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2019.1589056

Essentials when studying child-father attachment: A

fundamental view on safe haven and secure base
phenomena
Karin Grossmann and Klaus E Grossmann
Faculty of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The most relevant functions of an attachment figure for a child child-father attachment;
from evolutionary, cultural, and individual perspectives are being a secure base function; save
safe haven and secure base for the child. The concepts of beha- haven function; behavioral
vioral systems and emotional security are delineated. Central to a systems; desiderata for
future research on child-
child’s emotional security is her smooth transition between seek- father attachment
ing a safe haven when distressed and a secure base when at ease
with her attachment figures. The special quality of the child-father
attachment relationship is marked by an emphasis on supporting
the child’s exploration and her emotional intensity during agitated
play. Systematic analysis of child-father attachment requires care-
ful, realistic, and lengthy natural, ethological observations of beha-
viors that indicate the child’s attachment to father. Such
observations would result in a fuller understanding of the infants’
or children’s contribution to their development of psychological
security.

Interest in the role of fathers in child development has grown immensely in recent years.
Most studies agree that the preferred role of the father is that of a playmate for his child
within his function of being his/her attachment figure. This opens the discussion about
the function of attachment figures in general, and in particular about fathers. In this
realm, one of the fundamental questions is on what does a weak and naïve child expect
from a stronger and wiser person to whom he/she attaches herself (Because the father,
not the child, is the stronger and wiser person, and the child is weak and naïve and must
attach, the term child-father attachment, as we use it, is most theory-conform). What are
the most relevant functions of an attachment figure for a child from evolutionary,
cultural, and individual perspectives?
A path toward an answer has been outlined by John Bowlby. He put himself into the
tradition of Charles Darwin (Bowlby, 1958) and adopted for attachment theory the
naturalistic method advanced by him. “Set out in modern terms, it comprises the three
steps: first, making observations, asking questions and seeking explanations; secondly,
constructing an explanatory model; thirdly examining the adequacy of the model by
applying it to new data, and whenever possible, to data derived from experiment”

CONTACT Karin Grossmann Karin.Grossmann@psychologie.uni-regensburg.de Faculty of Psychology,

University of Regensburg, Germany
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 K. GROSSMANN AND K. E. GROSSMANN

(Bowlby, 1990, p. 336). Ainsworth, in turn, did exactly that, she observed at length many
infants in Uganda. Later, in Baltimore, USA, she tested and confirmed her original
interpretations and conclusions under convincing stringent conditions (Ainsworth,
Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978, 2015), and finally provided a standard instrument to
examine her assumption about the relation between maternal behavior toward the
infant at home and infant secure attachment at the end of the first year. These concepts
have guided attachment research studying the development of infant-mother attach-
ment. They profoundly changed our perception of what infants need for an emotionally
healthy development ever since.

Safe haven – secure base functions of the attachment relationship

The development of attachment rests on the quality of two kinds of behaviors by highly
personalized adults: (1) behaviors which serve the function as a haven of safety and (2)
behaviors which serve the function as a secure base. Already during her observation in
Uganda, Ainsworth (1967) observed that attachment behavior tends to be activated in
alarming situations that elicited fear, so that the baby would tend to move away from
a stranger or strange object and toward the attachment figure. The infant may move
away again from the attachment figure to explore when the alarming situation seems to
be over. Occasions that may tip the balance from exploratory to attachment behaviors
were also found in internal conditions of distress or fatigue, or indications that the
attachment figure may leave the infant alone (see also Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby,
1982). “The biological function of attachment behavior is protection of the young from
a wide variety of dangers. The biological function of exploration and sociable behavior is
that of learning the skills necessary for more self-reliant survival, both in terms of individual
skills and of smooth integration into the social group.” (Marvin & Britner, 2016, p. 275).
The concept of behavioral systems which are complex and dynamic includes rules for
selecting (a) specific behaviors which are to serve specific goals, and (b) conditions
under which the selected behaviors will be exhibited, and (c) will be terminated based
on the child’s internal state and environmental context (see Marvin & Britner, 2016;
Sroufe & Waters, 1977). For example, sensing danger or feeling anxious, the young child
will want to be close to his source of protection and comfort, the haven of safety.
Behaviors serving the goal of seeking proximity with a highly individualized attachment
figure are the classical attachment behaviors – calling, crying, clinging, following, and
separation protest. To function appropriately, they require a certain amount of atten-
tiveness of the caregiver or an alternative person to bring about the desired closeness to
her attachment figure. In a family, an older sibling may perceive the signals of his
younger sibling and carry the baby to the attachment figure. A stranger will call for
the mother when seeing a baby cry. Each behavioral system of an infant is, under normal
circumstances, complemented by the appropriate behavioral system in the caregiver.
The rule for terminating attachment behaviors is proximity or contact with the attach-
ment figure that minimizes the activation of the attachment system by her protective,
comforting behavior. This, in turn, reactivates the exploratory/sociability system. The
exploratory/sociability system terminates when the fear/wariness system is reactivated.
The “Circle of Security” (Marvin, Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell, 2002) illustrates well the
 ATTACHMENT & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 3

steady interactive process between these two functions and serves as a template to
foster emotional security.
What is meant by feeling emotionally secure? Ainsworth adopted the concept of
security from her teacher W. Blatz and his security theory (Blatz, 1966). Its meaning is:
a momentarily weak person can rely without fear on a trusted stronger and wiser person
for protection in threatening situations. The challenges may be entering a new social
group, interacting with or talking to a strange person, climbing a mountain, or accepting
worrisome medical procedures. However, the number of significant trusted and reliable
others whose comfort will make the infant feel secure again, is limited for any given
infant.
Clearly, young children are also naturally well-equipped to relate to unknown persons
when not in distress. By interacting with others in positive ways, the other becomes
familiar, eventually like a member of her family. Familiar others, who support the child’s
need to explore, guide and help her to learn and understand her culture. If the familiar
others are reliably available, their presence becomes a “secure base”, the base from
which she can explore without worries. In addition, attachment figures not only provide
young children with the basis for feelings of security and curious exploration but also
provide a training ground for the ability to mentalize – the capacity to understand
themselves and others in terms of internal mental states. This, they learn during their
discourses with their family. This ability to mentalize is the basis for creating also new
interpretations about one’s feelings and experiences (Fonagy & Allison, 2014).
Explanations by trusted attachment figures are highly influential, those by strangers
less so.

Smooth transitions between safe-haven and secure-base functions as

a marker of security
At any moment, and given that the attachment figure is present, a young child has the
option to seek closeness with the attachment figure when feeling alarmed or exploring the
environment when feeling secure. Ainsworth’s concept of sensitivity always implied both
functions, secure base and safe haven. To assess an attachment person’s sensitivity sensu
Ainsworth (see Ainsworth et al., 2015, Appendix IV), the person has to respond appropriately
to ALL infant signals, signals indicating curiosity or playfulness as well as signals indicating
distress. Thus, an overall rating of sensitivity must always be based on observable parental
responses to infant behaviors serving the secure base function as well as the safe haven
function (see also Grossmann Grossmann, Kindler, & Zimmermann, 2008).
During short observations in the child’s familiar home, distress-comfort episodes may
not often occur enough or barely at all. This was the basic argument for creating the
Strange Situation procedure. It was explicitly designed to elicit separation distress in
toddlers to allow evaluation of the attachment person as a haven of safety and a secure
base (Ainsworth et al., 1978). If the infant showed “smooth transitions” (Ainsworth,
personal communication) between seeking the haven of safety – regaining security –
and venturing out from her as secure base, the two functions of the attachment person
were displayed and could be measured effectively. A smooth transition is evident when
the infant in distress moves toward the attachment figure, touches her or is reassured by
her and returns easily to play. It is an indication of the infant’s competence in signaling
4 K. GROSSMANN AND K. E. GROSSMANN

her needs appropriately. Smooth transitions between the activated attachment system
and the exploratory system are in fact the central marker of a secure attachment.
However, the Strange Situation was not designed as a substitute for extensive observa-
tions of the attachment person’s sensitive responsiveness. The Strange Situation (and
most likely any other early substitute measure), “… to Ainsworth’s chagrin, has stolen the
limelight from her observational findings of naturalistic mother-infant interaction patterns
at home.” (Bretherton, 1992, p. 765)

Special quality of the child–father relationship

Beyond all that, the infant-father attachment relationship seems to have a special
quality that is different from the infant-mother attachment relationship. Ainsworth,
reflecting on her observations in Uganda, pondered about the special case of infant-
father attachment: “One can only assume that there was some special quality in the
father’s interaction with his child – whether of tenderness or intense delight – which
evoked in turn strength of attachment disproportionate to the frequency of his interac-
tion with the baby” (Ainsworth, 1967, p. 352). Not only in our own, but also in many
other studies, fathers prefer to support their children’s play and exploration beha-
viors, thus functioning as a secure base (Grossmann et al., 2002; Lamb, 2010). During
supported play, a child acquires a higher level of mastery than without support. We
labeled this “secure exploration” because the child can rely on father’s help if her
competencies are at their limits.
Most fathers function also as a haven of safety if, for instance, their rough-and-tumble
-play that first elicits intense delight becomes too frightening for the child, and the father
has to stop and calm the child. Nevertheless, many fathers’ prioritization of exploration
and play is evident. Ainsworth suggested that it does not take feeding or diaper changes
for a child to form an attachment to her father; tenderness (i.e. comfort in close bodily
contact) and positive feelings during interaction suffice. In our longitudinal study,
fathers’ sensitive challenges during play that gave their 2-year-old children enjoyment
and a feeling of mastery were significantly associated with assessments of attachment
security at ages 6, 10, 16, and 22 years (Grossmann, Grossmann, & Kindler, 2005). The
associations between the SCIP (Sensitive Challenging Interactive Play) scores and later
attachment security were even more robust than the correlations with the children’s
attachment security with their fathers in the strange situation at age 1 year (Grossmann
et al., 2002, 2005). The findings suggest: the pivotal element is the child’s freedom to
turn to a reliably responsive person for whatever function she needs at any given
moment – haven of safety or secure base. In most cultures, mothers usually do more
of the daily caregiving routines than fathers and spend more time with the infant. There
may be more distress-comfort episodes during their joint time than during the limited
time many infants spend with their fathers. In fact, in our own observations, the
German fathers of the 1970s often handed the infant over to the mother as soon as
she cried or “smelled bad”. Mothers performed the function of a safe haven vastly more
often than fathers did. Thus, mothers’ function of a safe haven was needed by the
infants vastly more often than the safe-haven function of fathers.
Perhaps for good reasons, mothers’ caregiving behavioral system in response to
attachment behaviors of the child may have predominance over supporting the child’s
 ATTACHMENT & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 5

exploration. The caregiving behavioral system includes protection and monitoring the
child’s well-being for signs of illness or injury. In evolutionary perspective, the child’s
survival is more valuable for a mother than for a father, because the reproductive
capacity of women is limited, and they invest much energy during pregnancy and
nursing the baby. Men, in contrast, can sire many more children with different women
(Hrdy, 1999). Cultures differ in the investment of fathers in their children, but if fathers
do invest, they engage more easily and more enthusiastically in play behavior.

Future research on child-father attachment

In sum, young children’s attachment needs usually are addressed towards mature
individually known and reliably present adults. These adults might serve as haven of
safety for the child’s protection and relief of physiological distress, as well as secure base
to support child exploration of the physical and cultural environment. Support for
mastering intense emotions may even be provided in rough-and-tumble play when
the child’s ability to manage her emotions is challenged. Children frequently switch
during interaction between the need for calming and consolation on one hand, and
secure base “backup” for the need for support during exploration, play, and knowledge
acquisition.
To capture this system empirically, careful and lengthy natural, ethological observations
of infants’ and children’s behaviors that indicate their attachment to father is necessary but,
to our knowledge, missing in child-father research. A full picture must capture infant
behaviors signaling happiness and curiosity, wariness and fear, bodily wellness and distress,
and the full range of responsive as well as challenging paternal behaviors. Observations
must neither be restricted by convenient pre-defined time limitations nor by prematurely
defined behaviors. Otherwise, our scientific enterprise to develop a full picture of children’s
complex pathways toward psychological security will be unduly curtailed.
All that has important implications for programs of father-education: Fathers need to
be alerted during joint play, how to perceive and respond sensitively to infant distress
and not only to infant exploratory intentions. With the joint concepts of haven of safety
and secure base in mind, interventions may become more joyful and more effective for
the infant’s as well as for the father’s benefit (Grossmann et al., 2008).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
Parts of this longitudinal study were supported by Stiftung Volkswagenwerk, Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft und die Köhler Stiftung im Stifterverband.

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