What Is Anxious Ambivalent Attachment and What Causes It?

The anxious ambivalent attachment style (known as anxious preoccupied attachment in adulthood) typically develops in children in the first 18 months of life.

During this formative period, a child’s caregiver(s) may have acted inconsistently toward the child’s needs. For example, they may have been nurturing and responsive on one occasion, but unavailable or insensitive the next.

This article will cover your top questions on anxious ambivalent attachment in childhood including:

• When and how does anxious ambivalent attachment develop in childhood?
• What the common behaviors of caregivers with anxious ambivalent children are
• How anxious ambivalent children perceive the behaviors of their caretakers
• The common behaviors and patterns of anxious ambivalent children.
• What ambivalence means in children vs. adults
• How anxious ambivalent attachment affects a child
• How a child be raised to have secure attachment

How Does Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Develop?

A child’s attachment style is formed through the type of bond that develops between themself and their caregivers: How the caregiver(s) meet their child’s needs forms a template for how the child sees the world and the people in it.   

Whether this outlook is positive or negative, it nevertheless has a significant impact on many other areas of the child’s life; from how willing they are to explore their world, to how they socialize with other children and adults, and even to how they behave in adult relationships.

Anxious ambivalent attachment is typically caused by inconsistency from caregiver(s). On one hand, these caregivers may have been attentive to their child’s cues, but on the other, they may have been rejecting or punitive towards them.

For example, when the child cries for affection, the caregiver on some occasions may run to cater to their need. But, other times they may feel like it’s best for the child to self-soothe, so they ignore their cries. This kind of behavior might mean that the child starts to see their caregiver’s actions as unpredictable.

As a result, the child starts to feel conflicted about how their caregiver is going to respond to them. When their parent is attentive, the child is content and happy, but when they’re not the child is confused. For this reason, the child may start to develop ambivalent attachment patterns and behaviors. They might feel distrustful of their caregiver, but also desperately want affection and for them to meet their emotional needs so they cling to them.

There are a number of possible reasons why parents of children with ambivalent attachment act the way they do, one being continuing a pattern of behavior stemming from an anxious attachment style of their own.

Anxious Ambivalent Caregiver Behaviors

In a nutshell, caregivers of anxious ambivalent children tend to be:

• Inconsistent and unpredictable in how they respond to their child’s needs
• More aware of their own needs than those of their children’s – possibly because they likely didn’t receive the affection that they needed as a child
• Unreliable in the eyes of their child
• Loving and affectionate on some occasions, but punitive on others

What is ambivalence?

It can be difficult to act decisively and take a firm stance on something when you’re not sure how you really feel – or if you feel two conflicting things at the same time. This is what it’s like to be anxious ambivalent: Behaving or feeling contradictorily towards someone or something.

Ambi means both and valence means vigor. Therefore, ambivalence is to alternate between feeling both strongly positive and strongly negative. This can understandably create mixed feelings, potentially leading to indecisiveness or uncertainty.

You may come across ambivalence being used interchangeably with apathetic, but the two are starkly different. Apathetic means not having very strong feelings on a topic at all. In contrast, someone who is ambivalent might feel an excess of emotions rather than an absence of them.

What Does the Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Style Look Like in Adults?

Anxious ambivalent attachment is known as anxious preoccupied attachment in adulthood. Due to a childhood of inconsistency, adults with anxious preoccupied attachment learned to sacrifice their own needs to increase feelings of stability and security. Doing so might look like struggling to choose where to go on holiday, what film to watch, or restaurant to eat in because they prefer to cater to other peoples’ wants and desires.

In attempts to gain emotional closeness as well as validate their self-worth, adults with anxious preoccupied attachment may also push for intimacy and act clingy in relationships. For such reasons, the anxious preoccupied attachment style can significantly affect romantic relationships.

However, this article will continue to focus on how the anxious ambivalent attachment style and its associated behaviors develop in a child, as well as some evidence-based advice on how to raise a securely attached child.

How does an anxious ambivalent child behave?

In the Strange Situation experiment in 1969, developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth noted that after a period of absence from their mothers, some children acted bewildered and agitated, and avoided eye contact with their mothers on their return. However, these children also clung to their mothers desperately during their reunion.

These children were entirely focused on staying near their mothers, but they couldn’t seem to derive any comfort from her. The group of children exhibiting these behaviors was later classified as having anxious ambivalent attachment.

To further describe the actions of this group of children, a child with an anxious ambivalent attachment style might try to stay close to their parent by “up-regulating” their emotions. This might mean becoming distressed, angry, and throwing a temper tantrum for attention when threatened with separation from their caregiver.

Even though these children might resist soothing from their caregiver when they’re reunited with them, they may also show conflicting actions such as clinging to them to feel safe.

Children with the anxious ambivalent attachment style are often insecure about exploring their world, and for this reason, may find it hard to settle in with groups of children. When in such situations, they might try to attract the attention of adults in the vicinity to feel safe. An example of such a situation would include clinging to a teacher in the playground instead of playing with other children.

How Does an Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Style Affect a Child?

Not only does an anxious ambivalent attachment style affect how a child socializes with other children, but it can also affect their comprehension, self-control, and ability to perform tasks successfully – their executive functioning skills.

The reason for such difficulties may be due to how a child with anxious ambivalent attachment feels so consumed by trying to gain and maintain the attention of adults. Because of this, they may struggle to focus, plan ahead, and absorb instructions. They may ask questions repeatedly or even act like the “class clown” to ensure that they’re noticed, even if this attention is negative reinforcement of their behaviors.

These kinds of actions in the classroom and at home can be disruptive and can sometimes even lead to a misdiagnosis of ADHD. Yet, underneath their “performances” and attention-seeking behaviors, anxious ambivalent children are likely experiencing high levels of anxiety which are impairing their ability to do the tasks that they are asked to do.

To recap, children with ambivalent attachment tend to:

• Attempt to stay close to their caregiver
• Act out for attention, such as through temper tantrums or becoming overly upset
• Resist soothing, but also cling to the parent
• Feel insecure about exploring their world
• Be needy for adult attention (such as their teachers or supervisor)
• Have difficulty focusing on tasks which can even lead to ADHD misdiagnosis
• Have highly anxious habits

How Does Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Evolve in Adulthood?

We are all unique individuals, and so are our experiences between infancy and adulthood. However, if we do not encounter secure attachments during this time, it’s likely that the anxious ambivalent attachment style will continue into our adult lives – transforming into the anxious preoccupied attachment style.

Adults with the anxious preoccupied attachment style often struggle to understand and regulate their emotions, and intensely fear abandonment which can result in clingy and anxious behaviors. They are hypervigilant towards perceived threats to their important relationships, so will do anything within their power to prevent their loved ones from leaving them, but sometimes to a fault. For these reasons, adults with an anxious preoccupied attachment style may experience difficulties in relationships – romantic and otherwise.

Fortunately, it is possible to change an anxious attachment style, even as an adult. If you would like to more about the process of transforming your attachment style into a more secure one, check out our article: Earned Secure Attachment: Transforming Your Insecure Attachment Style.

How Can a Child Be Raised to Develop a Secure Attachment?

How much attention, love, and support is too little? How much is smothering? The truth is that every caregiver and child is unique, so, at times, parenting can be difficult to navigate.

Fortunately, children are born with strong survival instincts based on their inability to survive on their own and their reliance on adults for nurturance and protection.

Thus, children give out signals to notify their caregivers that they need something. How parents respond to these cues from their children can differ between a secure and insecure anxious ambivalent attachment style.

Further Reading Related to Ambivalent Attachment in Children

This article is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to discerning how to raise a child with a secure attachment.

If you’re interested in knowing more, then check out our articles on anxious attachment in adult relationships, and secure attachment in adult relationships as well as five requirements for developing secure attachment in childhood. 

Sources:

Bowlby, J. (2012). A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory. London: Routledge.

Cassidy J, Berlin LJ (1994). The insecure / ambivalent pattern of attachment: theory and research. Child Dev, 65(4), 971-91.

Brown, D. P., Elliott, D. S. (2016). Attachment Disturbances in Adults: Treatment for Comprehensive Repair. New York: W.W. Norton.

Salter, M.D., Ainsworth, M.C., Blehar, E.W., Wall, S.N. (2015). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. New York: Taylor & Francis.