Bowlby, John

Name

Bowlby, John

Introduction

The father of attachment theory, John Mostyn Bowlby, was born in 1907 in London to Anthony Alfred Bowlby, a surgeon of renown, whose military service and medical practice frequently separated him from his family, and Mary Bridget Mostyn, whom Bowlby characterized as stable and sensible. The couple married and started their family unusually late in life, but as was customary among middle- and upper-class Edwardians, the rearing of Bowlby and his five siblings was conducted almost entirely by nursemaids. Minnie, the nursemaid who had daily charge of Bowlby, left the household when he was 4 years old, the effects of which may have inspired him to assert that the loss of a “loving nanny” in young childhood “can be almost as tragic as the loss of a mother” (Bowlby 1958, p. 7). After being sent to boarding school to avoid the threat of air raids on London, and later naval training as a cadet, Bowlby determined that a military path would offer him little...