Reconceptualizing the Nurse??s Role in the Newborn Period as an ???Attacher???

In Brief In the first few days and weeks after a child's birth, attachment is a major task for the mother and her newborn. Success in this long-term psychological process is associated with positive life-long outcomes for both the parenting mother and her child. This article proposes a relational approach to newborn nursing grounded in the principles of attachment theory. Understanding this “attacher” approach can benefit nurses by bringing a gratifying depth to their practice and can benefit families by helping mothers and newborns address the most compelling task before them. Nursing has come so far from being a task-oriented profession. While there are still tasks to be performed, we now know that we should do them with a higher purpose in mind-in this case, to serve as the model of attachment for mothers and newborns.