What is a Secure Base?

When a child is securely attached, he/she is "confident that his parent will be available, responsive, and helpful should he encounter adverse or frightening situations. With this assurance, he feels bold in his explorations of the world. This pattern is promoted by a parent, in the early years especially by mother, being readily available, sensitive to her child's signals, and lovingly responsive when he seeks protection and/or comfort." A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development by John Bowlby

After about a year of bonding to the mother (or primary caregiver), the child has internalized memory after memory of loving experiences with mother. Their tummy now has a well of love within it. With this tummy of love from bonding with mom, the child is now interested and able (with mobility) to explore the world beyond mother. The child edges out to go explore and runs back to mommy for reassurance and care. Going on little adventures exploring new things is scary and draws from their love bank, so the child quickly returns to safety, the secure base of mother. The love and care the child draws in when returning to mother for comfort, allows he/she to venture out even farther into the adventurous world of exploring.

The mother's role after the intense bonding phase (approximately the first year), becomes a secure base where the child decides when he/she needs to return and receive comfort and care. This begins the gradual process, that will unfold over years, of leaving mother to venture into the world.

Insightful Quotes

"Infants whose mothers have responded sensitively to their signals during the first year of life not only cry less during the second half of that year than do the babies of less responsive mothers but are more willing to fall in with their parent's wishes." A Secure Base by John Bowlby

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts...You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth." The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

"You get an empathetic child not by trying to teach the child and admonish the child to be empathetic, you get an empathetic child by being empathetic with the child. The child's understanding of relationships can only be from the relationships he's experienced." Becoming Attached: first relationships and how they shape our capacity to love by Robert Karen

"The infant's (0-3 years) fundamental need is to receive unconditional love and care...Training and discipline are necessary as the baby enters toddlerhood, of course, but good training does not undermine the overriding need for the 0-3 children to learn to receive." The Life Model by James Friesen, E. James Wilder, Anne Bierling, Rick Koepcke, and Maribeth Poole

"The idea that early and abundant independence from parents is desirable may be part of an overall societal pressure on kids and parents toward early forced independence (also seen in pressures toward early weaning, sleeping alone and through the night at a very young age, and so forth). More and more research is showing, and parents are discovering, that strong attachment bonds between child and parents, not forced independence, creates happy children and healthy socialization." The Well-Adjusted Child by Rachel Gathercole