Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg
Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg is a developmental psychologist and first author of the most useful paper in attachment research, which is also the one least often quoted. Pooling seventy trials of programmes designed to improve the parent-infant bond, she found that the short, practical ones worked and the long, intensive ones did not. The paper is called "Less is more".
Who they are
Most of attachment research is observational, which means it can establish that sensitive parents have secure babies without establishing which way the arrow runs. Intervention trials are different. Families are assigned to a programme at random, so a difference afterwards is caused rather than merely associated.
The 2003 meta-analysis with Marinus van IJzendoorn and Femmie Juffer gathered seventy such studies and eighty-eight intervention effects. Randomised programmes moved insensitive parenting and moved infant attachment security. The improvement in security was small, and it was clean.
The finding inside the finding is the practical one. What worked was a moderate number of sessions with a clear behavioural focus, often using video of the parent and baby played back so the parent can see the signals they are missing. Longer, more intensive, more insight-oriented programmes did worse, including in families with multiple problems, where the instinct to do more is strongest.
Two further things follow. Programmes that moved sensitivity more also moved security more, which is the best available support for sensitivity being causal rather than incidental. And the whole result sits at the infant end of life. There is nothing comparable at the adult end, where the evidence for changing attachment is a review of fourteen studies, most of them without a control group.
Key papers
Key papers
Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Juffer, F. (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129(2), 195-215. First author, and the paper the page is built on. Seventy randomised trials of programmes designed to improve the parent-infant bond, yielding eighty-eight intervention effects. The programmes moved insensitive parenting and moved infant attachment security, and because families were assigned at random this is the field's cleanest causal evidence rather than another observational association. The improvement in security was small and clean. The result inside the result is the one the title names: a moderate number of sessions with a clear behavioural focus, often using video of the parent and baby played back, outperformed longer, more intensive and more insight-oriented programmes, including in families with several problems at once. Programmes that moved sensitivity further also moved security further.
Taylor, P., Rietzschel, J., Danquah, A., & Berry, K. (2015). Psychotherapy Research, 25(2), 222-238. Included here to mark the limit. The evidence above is at the infant end of life. At the adult end there is a review of fourteen studies, most without a control group, and nothing comparable.
Key ideas
Randomisation is what makes this causal. The rest of the field cannot say that.
Less is more, literally. More sessions and more insight made outcomes worse, which is the opposite of the intuition.
The evidence is at the baby end. Any claim about changing an adult's attachment is on far thinner ground.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Juffer, F. (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129(2), 195-215.
- Taylor, P., Rietzschel, J., Danquah, A., & Berry, K. (2015). Psychotherapy Research, 25(2), 222-238.