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Background/Biography
Mary Ainsworth was born on December 1, 1913 in Glendale, Ohio. Her family moved to Toronto when she was five years old where her father became the president of a manufacturing firm.
At 15 years old she read Character and the Conduct of Life by William MCDougall. This book was the reason she started studying psychology.
She attended the University of Toronto, where she earned a bachelor's, master's, and a Ph.D degree. She went on to marry her husband, Leonard Ainsworth, which led them to move to London, where she was able to collaborate with a psychologist, John Bowlby. From his research she was able to develop her own research.
Work In Psychology
She collaborated with John Bowlby with his research about infant-mother attachment. She also enjoyed the naturalistic observation of mother-child seperation in Bowlby's research.
She had a research oppurtunity when she moved to Kampala, Uganda. She conducted a longitudinal study of mother-infant attachment interactions in Ganda villages. This research was so significant that it was published in a book, Infancy in Uganda: Infant Care and Growth of Love. Later, the Ainsworths' moved to Baltimore where Mary lectured at Johns Hopkins University, and she became a professor of developmental psychology. Not long after her and her husband divorced.
Mary then launched the Baltimore Project, which was similar to her longitudinal study in Uganda. Every month she would visit 26 families for 12 months, who had a new born. She would write down notes about the many interactions with mother and infant throughout the day. The last observation at 12 months was when the mother was seperated and then reunited with the infant, also known as the "Strange Situation". This was significant because it establsihed the attachment theory.
The attachment theory concluded that children need a close emotional bond with their caregiver. The first six months of a infants life is crucial because that is when this bond is formed. If the caregiver steps out of the room for a second then the baby becomes distressed, but when they are there in the room with them the baby will play comfortably. This shows that the mother was resposive and observable and is known as the secure attachment. If however, the mother steps out side of the room and the baby starts having tantrums or have no reaction at all it is called the insecure attachment which shows that the mother didn't give attention to the baby and wasen't responsive. This situation is known as the "Strange Situation".
Mary Ainsworth got some of her inspriation from John Bowlby, who was a child psychologist working on child attachment and development. She will be most remembered for her "Strange Situation" in psychology because it helped identify the secure or insecure attachment between the child and caregiver. Mary Ainsworth will continue to have an impact on psychology for years to come because she has established the the different types of attachment and the attachment theory.
Works Cited
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Salter-Ainsworth
https://www.britannica.com/science/attachment-theory
https://study.com/academy/lesson/mary-ainsworth-theory-biography-quiz.html#:~:text=Mary%20Ainsworth%20is%20an%20American,of%20child%20attachment%20and%20development.
https://www.verywellmind.com/mary-ainsworth-biography-2795501