Mary Ainsworth

Mary Ainsworth (December 1913 - 1999) was an American developmental psychologist known for her work in early emotional attachment with The Strange Situation.

Early life
Mary D. Salter Ainsworth was born in Glendale, Ohio in 1913, eldest of three sisters. Her parents both graduated from Dickinson College. Her father earned his Master's in History and was transferred to a manufacturing firm in Canada when Ainsworth was five. While her parents always put a strong emphasis on education, it was William McDougall's book Character and the Conduct of Life that inspired her interest in psychology.

Ainsworth enrolled in honors program in psychology at the University of Toronto in the fall of 1929. She earned her BA in 1935, her MA in 1936, and her Ph.D in 1939, all from the University of Toronto. She stayed to teach for a few years before joined the Canadian Women's Army Corp in 1942 in World War II, reaching the rank of Major in 1945.

She returned to Toronto to continue teaching personality psychology and conduct research. She married Leonard Ainsworth in 1950 and moved to London with him to allow him to finish his graduate degree at University College.

Early work
While in England, Ainsworth joined the research team at Tavistock Clinic investigating the effects of materal separation on child development. Comparison of disrupted mother-child bonds to normal mother-child relationship showed that a child's lack of a mother figure leads to "adverse development effects." In 1954, she left Tavistock Clinic to do research in Africa, where she carried out her longitudinal field study of mother-infant interaction.

She and her colleagues developed the Strange Situation Procedure (See Patterns of Attachment), which is a widely used, well researched and validated, method of assessing an infant's pattern and style of attachment to a caregiver.

Major works

 * Ainsworth, M. and Bowlby, J. (1965). Child Care and the Growth of Love. London: Penguin Books.
 * Ainsworth, M. (1967). Infancy in Uganda. Baltimore: John Hopkins.
 * Ainsworth, M., Blehar, M., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.