Effects of Day-Care

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What does research show about the effects of day-care on children’s social development? Day-care can be defined as being: regular temporary separation; outside the home environment and not with a family member. However the effects of day-care on social development of infants and into later life is a controversial debate between psychologists. Some such as John Bowlby saw that maternal deprivation caused by separation of infant from mother, due to day-care caused harmful effects - such as mental health issues and behavioural problems - on the infants social development. Bowlby believed in the evolutionary theory of attachment suggesting that humans were born biologically programmed to form attachments in order to successfully survive. An example of this would be the instinctive fear of strangers, which demonstrates an important survival mechanism. He furthermore believed that the attachment relationship between mother and child acted as a prototype for future social relationships, therefore disrupting this by means of day-care could have severe consequences. Disrupting the bond to the attachment figure (mother) during the first 2-year period through day-care meant that the child would suffer long-term consequences on their ability to socialise and cause; delinquency, reduced intelligence, increased aggression, depression and being under affectionate. Bowlby’s ‘Thieves study’ in 1944 aimed to investigate the effects of maternal deprivation through 44 adolescents who were referred to a child protection program in London because of stealing and was resolved by supporting his initial ideas. Later on Belsky and Rovine in 1988 went on to further support Bowlby's initial ideas. However other research suggested that maternal attachments between mother and child are not damaged through day-care shown by the ‘strange situation’ a way of measuring attachment. Research
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