it's going to be rare to find anyone defending the theory. It's just dying out slowly...Yes, what happens to you in the first year or two of life has an effect, but it's tiny. If I take a 1-year-old child who is securely attached, and the parents die and the child is adopted by a cruel foster parent, that child is in trouble. Their secure attachment is useless. When you think about it, it's silly that after the first year you could predict with any confidence what this person is going to be like in 20 years. It's a ridiculous idea." Attachment theory suggests the idea of an all-encompassing label to describe one person, but a 2013 study from Utah State suggests an individual can have different attachment styles in relation to different people. The study further concludes, "The relationship between father-child and mother-child attachment was not significant. Likewise, the relationship between child temperament and parent-child attachment was not significant. Also, parents' time away from their child was not a significant predictor of attachment." Attachment theory models are based on stressful situations and it focuses heavily on attachment to the mother and doesn't value as much the attachments to other family members and peers. Salvador Minuchin suggested that attachment theory's focus on the mother-child relation ignores the value in other familial influences: "The entire family—not just the mother or primary caretaker—including father, siblings, grandparents, often cousins, aunts and uncles, are extremely significant in the experience of the child...And yet, when I hear attachment theorists talk, I don't hear anything about these other important figures in a child's life." In exploring the relationship between childhood attachment and romantic relationships, a 2013 study concluded, "The first variable of attachment to parent, compared to romantic partner, had a medium effect size. This would suggest that the attachment to a parent is occasionally associated to the attachment to romantic partner, but is not strongly correlated." Additional variables comparing relationship quality/satisfaction, care/avoidance and alienation/anxiety fail to have strong correlations. Attachment theory, some argue, represents a Western middle-class perspective, ignoring the diverse caregiving values and practices in most of the world. See also Atlas personality Attachment-based therapy (children) Attachment measures Attachment parenting Attachment theory and psychology of religion Fathers as attachment figures Human bonding Nurture kinship Relationship Science Citations General and cited references Further reading Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement Ethology Evolutionary biology Evolutionary psychology