In the early years, children adapt to their caregivers with extraordinary creativity. A child who grows up with an unpredictable parent may become hyper-attuned to, and anxious about, every shift in mood. Another child, having their needs dismissed, may begin to rely more on themselves. These strategies serve the purpose of maintaining the bond with a caregiver in less-than-ideal circumstances.

Yet in adulthood, our friends or romantic partners may not be unpredictable or dismissive. Instead, they may approach us with openness and trust. In these contexts, the strategies that once helped us can become barriers, adaptations carried from one environment into contexts that look very different.

How Children Adapt to Their Caregivers

Attachment research emphasizes the idea that children’s attachment behaviors are adaptations to the caregiving environment (Bowlby, 1969). When caregivers respond consistently and sensitively to an infant’s needs, the child learns that asking for help will result in those needs being met (Cassidy, 2008). However, when caregivers are less reliable, children do not simply give up but develop clever ways to maintain proximity.

Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation study (1978) was the first to demonstrate distinct patterns in how children respond to their caregiver’s behavior. When caregivers are emotionally distant or rejecting, children often adapt by downplaying their needs to avoid further rejection. When caregivers are inconsistent, children may develop anxious attachment patterns, amplifying their distress signals to ensure that the caregiver notices them.

Notably, these childhood attachment behaviors are not “problems” in either the child or the caregiver, but can be understood as adaptive strategies. Even behaviors which look maladaptive, such as avoiding a parent or extreme clinginess, serve a purpose of maximizing the chance of staying close to the caregiver, which, from an evolutionary perspective, ensures survival.

Ripples of Parental Trauma

The attachment bond between the infant and caregiver is vulnerable to the caregiver’s own traumatic experiences. In fact, research shows that trauma can echo across generations, often through its impact on the parent–child bond. Parents carrying unresolved distress may become emotionally unavailable, fearful, or overprotective (Kostova & Matanova, 2024). One large study, for instance, found that children of mothers exposed to intimate partner violence had higher emotional and behavioral difficulties than children of caregivers without such histories (Gartland et al., 2019).

In this way, parental trauma can alter caregiving and weaken a child’s sense of security, leaving them more vulnerable to the emotional imprint of trauma. Trauma may also leave biological traces. Stress hormones and gene expression can be altered in ways that affect how the brain and body handle stress. Yehuda and Lehrner (2018) note that in animal studies these changes can last for more than one generation. In humans, similar patterns have been observed in the children of Holocaust survivors, who often show distinctive stress hormone profiles despite never experiencing trauma themselves (Yehuda et al., 2000).

From Childhood Attachment to Adult Relationships

The influence of our first attachment bonds can extend well into later life. These first relationships become internalized as working models that guide expectations in future social interactions. A child raised in a sensitive and responsive family builds up the expectation that the world is safe, that others will be supportive and reliable, and that they themselves are worthy of love and care. By contrast, a child raised in an inconsistent home may expect abandonment at any moment, clinging tightly to relationships for fear of losing them.

Adaptive attachment strategies built during childhood may not be helpful during adulthood. For a child, maintaining any bond with caregivers, even an imperfect one, can be adaptive, and behaviors like avoidance or hyper-vigilance may serve to gain attention from the caregiver. However, as the developmental mismatch hypothesis suggests, when environments change, from adversity to safety, or the reverse, old strategies can misalign with the current reality (Dagan et al., 2021).

Consider a child who lived in an unpredictable home by staying in constant alarm, hyper-attuned to rejection cues. As an adult, they may carry that anxiety into safe relationships, still adapting to threats that no longer exist. The internal working model built during childhood, and a nervous system tuned to danger, become out of sync with adult reality. In a trusting friendship, for instance, constant reassurance-seeking or scanning for rejection signs can strain the bond.

Supporting this, a review reported that hyperactivating strategies in early life were not strongly linked to negative outcomes, but in adulthood anxious attachment patterns became more problematic because they interfered with independence and healthy functioning (Dagan et al., 2021). This is why trauma-informed therapies often focus on helping adults update their internal models, learning that a partner’s anger is not life-threatening in the way a parent’s might have been, or that showing need will not inevitably lead to rejection. With support, people can re-adapt their tendencies to be more flexible and find healthier ways of relating in the present.

The Wisdom in Early Adaptations

Attachment science shows how trauma and caregiving patterns reverberate across generations and throughout the lifespan. A caregiver’s unresolved experiences can shape their bond with their child. In turn, those early childhood attachment experiences influence brain development, stress responses, and internal models of relationships, leaving traces that guide how we manage emotions and trust others later in life.

The fact that early adaptations can later become maladaptive does not mean the child was “wrong” to develop them, but it shows the impressive plasticity of the attachment system. Growth often involves realizing that strategies forged in an unsafe childhood (e.g., never trust anyone, always stay vigilant, or conversely, never let anyone leave your sight) might be re-evaluated in light of a safer adulthood.

References

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss (No. 79). Random House.
Dagan, O., Groh, A. M., Madigan, S., & Bernard, K. (2021). A lifespan development theory of insecure attachment and internalizing symptoms: Integrating meta-analytic evidence via a testable evolutionary mis/match hypothesis. Brain sciences, 11(9), 1226.
Gartland, D., Giallo, R., Woolhouse, H., Mensah, F., & Brown, S. J. (2019). Intergenerational impacts of family violence-mothers and children in a large prospective pregnancy cohort study. EClinicalMedicine, 15, 51-61.
Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). What a Strange Situation. na.
Kostova, Z., & Matanova, V. L. (2024). Transgenerational trauma and attachment. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1362561.
Yehuda, R., Bierer, L. M., Schmeidler, J., Aferiat, D. H., Breslau, I., & Dolan, S. (2000). Low cortisol and risk for PTSD in adult offspring of holocaust survivors. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(8), 1252-1259.
Yehuda, R., & Lehrner, A. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World psychiatry, 17(3), 243-257.