Mary Main

Our cherished colleague, Mary Main, passed away peacefully at her home on January 6, 2023, just short of her 80th birthday and after a courageous battle with a long illness. An academic pioneer, Mary joined the UC Berkeley Psychology Department in 1973, as part of a new wave of female faculty hired in the 1970's, after decades in which women were not considered for such positions. Since her young adulthood, she also faced recurring medical challenges, but despite these constraints, she forged a remarkable career of great impact.

Mary was born on February 7, 1943 in Redbank, Michigan, to Raymond Biggar and Mary Louise Biggar (Snyder). She earned a 1968 B.A. in Classics and Natural Sciences from St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland and a 1973 Ph.D. in Psychology, with distinction, from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, under the supervision of Mary Ainsworth. Mary Main was blessed with two loving marriages. In 1964, when she was 21, she married Al Main, her undergraduate tutor in Greek history at St. Johns. Retiring early, he followed her to Berkeley but sadly he passed away in the summer of 1974, at the end of Mary's first year as an assistant professor. In February 1980, Mary and Erik Hesse (who survives her) became partners in work and life.

Mary Main, along with her husband Erik and her students, transformed the study of attachment—the universal need of animals and humans for proximity and nurturance in times of stress. Mary built upon the ethological perspective of Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, who studied ducklings imprinted on their mothers, and of John Bowlby, who focused on the reactions of children separated from their parents during WWII. She expanded upon the experimental method developed by her mentor Mary Ainsworth, of measuring children's separation from and reunions with their mothers in a laboratory setting (the Strange Situation). Mary Main’s enriched formulation of attachment theory and her invention of a method of assessing cognitive/emotional models of attachment in adults by asking about the quality of their relationships with their parents broke new ground. Her highly cited work stimulated yearly conferences and the involvement of literally thousands of researchers and clinicians in countries and cultures across the world interested in the generational transmission of parenting styles.

Mary’s first theoretical advance was to go beyond Ainsworth’s assumption that the Strange Situation measures three specific reactions to separation, to include a new fourth category and to recognize that these categories could be interpreted as universal patterns of behavior and emotion regulation in response to threat: (1) Secure attachment, in which child behavior emerges to maintain closeness to the parent; (2) Avoidant attachment, in which the child’s withdrawal serves the function of keeping the parent close while not demanding a direct response; (3) Anxious attachment, in which the child engages in frantic attempts to re-establish contact with a caregiver; and (4) Disorganized attachment, in which the child’s behavior shows a serious disruption in patterning. These patterns of attachment behavior were associated with adaptation or maladaptation in many different life domains, including adult and child personality styles, reactions to conflict, depression, and aggression. Mary’s initial research at UC Berkeley was novel for its times in the 1970s (and is still rare) in that the sample included children’s reunions with their fathers as well as with their mothers after a brief separation.

A second and novel contribution by Main, Hesse, and her students Carol George and Nancy Kaplan was the idea that adults also create working models of attachment, based on early family experience, that shape their abilities to cope with stress and  provide nurturance to their offspring. That is, beyond observable behavior, attachment systems exist on the level of cognitive representations that can be elicited and measured in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), in which adults are asked to describe the qualities of their relationships with their parents or caretakers, especially when those relationships were under stress. The creation of the AAI along with the Strange Situation allows for the study of attachment in parent-child and intimate couple relationships across cultures and across the lifespan.

A third contribution of Main and her collaborators, supported by many studies, was the insight that the attachment system functions as a mechanism to explain the transmission of behavior patterns across time and generations. While there is considerable stability across time and family relationships, many children with insecure attachment are not doomed to remain so, and it is possible for insecurely attached parents to rear children who are securely attached. The possibility of shifts in attachment security has challenged investigators to create interventions for parents to help them respond sensitively to their children’s cues in order to foster both the parents’ and the child’s development of more productive ways of maintaining proximity and nurturance in their relationships.

Mary’s significant contributions to the field of Developmental Psychology have been recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988; many invited lectures and grants, three honorary doctorates (University of Uppsala, Sweden in 2000; University of Goteborg, Sweden in 2007; University of Haifa, Israel in 2010); the establishment in 2004 of the Mary Main Chair in Life-Span Studies of Attachment at Leiden University, Netherlands; and a 2017 lifetime achievement award from the Society for Social, Emotional and Attachment Studies (SEAS). Her intellectual biography appears in the book Cornerstones of Attachment Research (2020) by Robbie Duschinsky, and her scientific papers and correspondence will be archived at the Wellcome Trust in London.

At Berkeley, Mary was often a quiet and modest presence. Mary served as area head in developmental psychology and on a number of departmental and university commitees, including an 11 year stint on the Academic Senate Committee on Research (2003-2014). She was experienced mostly by her colleagues in small seminars, in dinners at her home, or at lunches in local restaurants. One colleague described fond memories of a lunch with Mary “that lasted for hours and will stand forever as one of those ‘this is why we are academics moments.’” Others recalled co-teaching seminars with her and the twinkle in her eye as she engaged eagerly in both discussion and debate. Another colleague remarked on her caring and "unique ability to really listen to new ideas." They characterized her commentary as sensitive and incisive, demonstrating a deep appreciation of both biological and psychodynamic determinants in the understanding of family relationships. Two of us (Cowans) collaborated closely with her on student dissertations where we witnessed her reluctance to approve the work until it was (almost) perfect. One of us (Weinstein) remembers a thoughtful and cherished gift from Mary—the video-taping of her twin sons at play at 6 months and 4 years of age.

Still, none of her kindness, wisdom, and supportive mentorship conveyed to those who knew Mary, but did not know her work well, what a towering and path-breaking figure she was in so many venues outside UC Berkeley and across the world. She will be deeply missed by her colleagues and by the multitudes of students and faculty members whose work has been shaped by her generous and creative intellectual contributions to the study of intimate relationships.

—Philip Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Rhona Weinstein