Childhood's Reach Into Our Adult Social Health

Social health is an important part of overall well-being.

Source: RDNE Stock project/Pexels

Wellness experts advise paying attention to exercise, diet, and sleep.

All three things may affect our health, yet another side of wellness can be critical. The relationships in our life matter, and social health merits the attention that both mental and physical health receive.

Steven Crane, research scholar and head of the Social Engagement pillar of Stanford Lifestyle Medicine, put it this way: “Strong relationships are the bedrock of our well-being, and they are just as important for our health as going to the gym or eating healthy food."

Connections with others can aid in coping with life challenges in the present, yet people may learn their style of adult friendships while in childhood. As Hood (2024) pointed out, social interactions during childhood form the foundation of adult behavior and affect individuals’ happiness.

Researchers John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth were pioneers in the field of child-parent bonds through observations in different situations. In the 1970s, Ainsworth and her colleagues identified three types of attachment from their research: secure attachment, insecure-avoidant attachment, and insecure-resistant attachment (Pomerantz, 2023).

Babies with the “secure” attachment type used their mothers as a secure base in exploring a room, showed appropriate stranger anxiety, and were relatively adjusted. Babies in the “insecure-avoidant” category showed little care when mothers left the room and tended to avoid the mothers upon their return. Finally, those babies in the “insecure-resistant” domain were visibly upset when mothers left the room and showed mixed responses when they re-entered the room. Research has found that the stable attachment type is associated with heightened self-concept, resilience in encountering stress, and a happier mood in general as children age (Pomerantz, 2023).

In her book Platonic: How the science of attachment can help you make—and keep—friends, Dr. Marisa G. Franco raises the importance of knowing one’s attachment style and its possible influence in social health, namely friendships. She wrote, “Understanding our attachment style is illuminating, not so we can mentally flog ourselves for our biased interpretations, but so we can understand ourselves better and grow in our friendships.”

The temptation to blame ourselves for having a non-secure attachment style is understandable. However, Dr. Franco told me, “If we make ourselves feel bad about our attachment style, we are reenacting on ourselves what makes us insecurely attached in the first place.”

She added that healing isn’t about shaming oneself regarding a certain attachment style. Rather it concerns a corrective experience and “treating ourselves in the ways that we never got.”

She also shared a pivotal point: “All of us are a sort of a mosaic of attachment styles,” Dr. Franco said. “We shouldn’t aim to be perfectly secure because then we alienate the parts of ourselves that aren’t.”

Regardless of attachment style, Dr. Franco reinforced the importance of social health in overall well-being toward the end of her book. “Don’t take friendships for granted,” she wrote. “Don’t be passive, letting friendship fizzle because you forgot to reach out."