Omar Alhindi Human Relations 11/19/08 Ms. Schell Romantic love We’ve all heard people say, “Judge a person by looking at his parents.” While some argue this is true, many theorists also argue it’s not. Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver were believers of this phenomenon. In their attachment theory of love, they explained that the way we establish a relationship all deals with how we were raised. Cindy and Phillip studied three types of parents: warm/responsive, cold/rejecting, and ambivalent/inconsistent. They then studied an infant’s attachment towards his parents, according to their care styles. Which they later studied that as adults they kept those same attachment styles when it came to romantic relationships. Thirdly, in the ambivalent/inconsistent parenting style Hazan and Shaver describe that in this stage parents were noticeably inconsistent in their reactions towards their child. These parents were sometimes responsive and sometimes not, these parents had their own agenda which got in the way of the amount of attention they gave their child. Parents in this stage loved their child but didn’t always show it in the best way. A child then grew an anxious/ambivalent attachment, which is characterized by strong separation protest and a tendency of the child to resist contact initiated by the caregiver, particularly after a separation. These children later developed the same attachment styles as adults. Adults in adults find that others are reluctant to get as close as they would like. Often worry that their partner doesn’t love them or want to stay with them. These adults also want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scared people away. Although not all theorists agree with Hazan and Shaver’s attachment theory, I strongly do. I believe that the way your parents attach to you, you tend to do the same towards a romantic partner.