1 Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts
Eisenberg and Main's comments "...that separation protest is not an accurate measure of the quality or security of the infant-mother relation..." and "...that this response to isolated separation represents cognitive growth..." support our position. We suggested that the similar patterns of separation protest for our sample of day-care and home-reared infants means that they did not differ in their rate of cognitive growth. For those who believe that separation protest measures attachment, the data imply that the day-care experience did not affect the quality of the child's emotional bond to his mother.