Strange Situation

How can we create strong attachments with our children and why does it matter? In this intimate, rigorous book, a mother investigates the often misunderstood science of attachment theory while navigating her relationships with her own daughter and mother.



After Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she began to feel that there was something ‘off’ about her experience of motherhood. She loved her daughter, but would often be angry, short on patience, even unkind. She worried that her own childhood had left her unable to properly bond. So she went on a journey to better understand herself, her daughter, and their relationship through the science of attachment.


Saltman launched a broad inquiry into attachment theory, a field of developmental psychology that answers the question of why — from an evolutionary point of view — love exists between parents and children. Focusing on the data from a famous laboratory procedure, the ‘Strange Situation’, she discovered that love is unbreakable. Each and every one of us — including her — is built for it.


In this deeply researched and enormously personal account, Saltman boldly asks science to answer to love, giving readers the tools with which to interpret and understand their own connections with others, and to have better, healthier relationships, whatever their situation.