Chapter 5 attachment Theory within a Modern evolutionary framework

as this quotation indicates, Charles Darwin was an attachment theorist. Although he focused on “society” (instead of significant others) and “comrades” (instead of attachment figures), Darwin was the first scientist to appreciate the full extent to which human social nature is a product of selection pressures. John Bowlby, who not only admired Darwin’s theoretical vision but was one of his biographers (see Bowlby, 1991), spent most of his brilliant career treading the intellectual path that Darwin started paving. Integrating ideas from Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, object relations theory, control systems theory, evolutionary biology, and the fields of ethology and cognitive psychology, Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980) developed a grand synthesis of social and personality development across the lifespan, which is now known as attachment theory. One reason why attachment theory is so generative and prominent today is its deep intellectual ties to fundamental principles of evolution. In many respects, however, attachment theory and its adherents have not kept up with developments in evolutionary biology. In fact, beyond acknowledging that attachment behavior evolved via natural selection to facilitate the survival of infants in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA), surprisingly little attachment-related research and writing addresses the importance of either reproduction and reproductive fitness as the target of natural selection or the role of environmental conditions, including parenting, in regulating the development of reproductive strategies. These are critical issues that we address in this chapter. As we shall see, attachment theory is one of a handful of major middle-level evolutionary theoChapter 5