Final answer:
Children without secure attachments can face numerous developmental issues, including difficulties in emotional regulation, fearfulness, and challenges forming healthy relationships. Insecure attachments such as resistant, avoidant, or disorganized can arise from neglect or inconsistent caregiving.
Step-by-step explanation:
Children who do not form attachments during childhood can suffer from a range of emotional, psychological, and social difficulties. Attachment plays a crucial role in psychosocial development, allowing children to develop relationships, interact with others, and manage their feelings. If children experience neglect or inconsistent caregiving, they could develop types of insecure attachment, such as resistant, avoidant, or disorganized attachment. These forms of attachment are associated with negative outcomes in emotional regulation, social skills, and later relationships.
Resistant attachments, for example, lead to children being clingy and rejecting of their caregivers, demonstrating fearfulness and difficulty in being comforted. Avoidant attachments manifest in children showing little to no response to caregivers, reflecting caregiving that is insensitive and inattentive. Disorganized attachment, often seen in abused children, results in erratic behavior and difficulty in emotion regulation. When children are subject to uninvolved or neglectful parenting styles, they may become emotionally withdrawn, display anxiety, perform poorly academically, and have an increased risk for substance abuse.