Mary Ainsworth

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Claudia Hammond looks at Mary Ainsworth's observational work in Africa influencing perceptions of the parent-child relationship. In this country, John Bowlby's name is synonymous with the theory of attachment - the bond between mother's and babies. But the experiment on which his work is based was carried out by an American psychologist, Mary Ainsworth. Through her observational work with mothers and infants in Africa, she designed the 'strange situation', a tool which is still used today to examine the parent-child relationship.