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Definitions matter: if maternal-fetal relationships are not attachment, what are they?

Judi Walsh1

  • 1School of Social Work & Psychology, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ, UK. judi.walsh@uea.ac.uk

Archives of Women'S Mental Health
|March 11, 2010
PubMed

Since Cranley's conceptualization in 1981, which produced a useful measure to investigate the construct, maternal-fetal relationships have most often been referred to as maternal-fetal, antenatal or prenatal "attachment". However, critical analysis of the literature suggests that this relationship is not an attachment relationship at all, as Bowlby and Ainsworth first defined it, but a multi-faceted construct guided instead by the caregiving system, the reciprocal partner to the attachment system, which evolved to provide care and protection.

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