DOUBLE TAB TO ZOOM ON PHONE OR TABLET Introduction tragedy of not investigating parent-infant separation. The seeds sown by Spitz’s work were fertilized by the young John Bowlby. Bowlby began his career in the study of medicine but was quickly drawn to what later would become the field of developmental psychology. He volunteered at schools where children with adjust- ment and behavioral struggles were living. Bowlby had a hunch that the detached nature of some of the children he worked with was connected to early separation from family members. Following this hunch became Bowlby’s life work. Because the psychoanalytic tradition in the early twentieth century focused on interpretation of children’s fantasy life, Bowlby’s field observations were rejected by his colleagues and largely considered irrelevant by the psychoana- lytic community. This did not deter his interest or passion in discov- ering the connection between behavior and early separation issues. John Bowlby brought the issue of attachment to the forefront of study for those interested in the causes and effects of early attach- ments on human behavior. In the 1950s, Bowlby hired Mary Ainsworth to work with him on his research studies. Ainsworth was a brilliant and exacting researcher who was, like Bowlby, fascinated by babies, attachment, and separation. She is best known to the early childhood commu- nity for developing her Strange Situation assessment. Like Bowlby, she has often been criticized and ignored by the psychoanalytic community. Attachment theory and the lifetime effects of early rela- tionships between babies and their primary caregivers were her life work. Sadly, she is often completely ignored by theorists writing about significant issues in infants’ first year of life. Contemporary Perspectives I focus here on the primary theorists whose work shaped our cur- rent approach to attachment and infant care. In addition to these significant contributors, many contemporary researchers have shaped our practices today. Some of these will be briefly high- lighted here. Tension has always existed between those who believe that growth and development depend on heredity (nature) and those who believe in the primacy of the environment (nurture). In the early twentieth century, one area in which psychologists 10 COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL