Describe and Evaluate One Theory of Attachment and Consider its Significance on Child Rearing Today Bowlby (1951) was influenced by ethological studies that suggested infants were "genetically programmed to form attachments to a single caregiver within a critical time period." The critical time period described is called the "sensitive period," it is a period of time in which something is likely to occur. He suggested that "mother love in infancy is as important for mental health as vitamins and proteins are for physical health." Bowlby focused on the mother as the attachment figure. Bowlby argued that attachment was an "evolved mechanism;" an innate response that ensured the survival of the child.
With this information, Bowlby realized that the current explanation from Freud that infants love their mother because of oral gratification was wrong. His new theory stated that infants are social from a very young age, 6 months to less than two years old. The infants become focused on a particular individual or a few individuals. Bowlby proposed that “patterns of relating acquired in the early parent-child relationship are internalized and form the basis for how an individual enters and subsequently maintains other close relationships” (Bretherton). Bowlby's aim was to discover the consequences of difficulties in forming attachments in childhood, and the effects this would have on an infant's later development.
Bowlby claimed that infants need one special attachment relationship that is qualatively different from all others. Lastly, the internal working model which is developed through the monotropic attachment. This model represents the infant’s knowledge about his/her relationship with the primary attachment figure, in other words, the mother. It generates expectations about other relationships, so whatever relationship the mother has formed with their child, whether she is kind and loving, or aggressive and uncaring, the child will develop and have this expectation in mind of all future relationships. For example, Hazan and Shaver (1987) showed that there is a link between early attachment experiences and later romantic relationships.
According to Bowlby (1973) a strong emotional bond between the mother figure and the infant called attachment has the biological origin. He hypothesised that for the baby to survive, it has to for an attachment, it needs to have a secure base, from which it can explore the environment and in times of danger or distress, a base it can return to for comfort and security. Bowlby argued that lack of such a secure base leads to infant developing an extreme distress called by developmental psychologists a 'separation anxiety'. The research by Robertson and Robertson (1989) into parent-child separations when either a primary caregiver or a child becomes hospitalized validates Bowlby's reasoning. This idea of attachment as innate adaptation mechanism is also supported by Harlow's (1958) research on primates into maternal deprivation.
Bowlby noted the apparent distress in children separated from their mothers in unusual circumstances e.g. hospitalisation. In studying the more abnormal and distressing situations he attempted to shed light on an understanding of normal emotional attachment development, and how a disruption could prove damaging to the child emotionally and through to adult maturation. Bowlby suggested that the presence of the mother was just as crucial to the baby as being supplied basic needs such as food. His conclusions led him to postulate that the distress at separation from the mother was universal in babies.
In addition he suggested the idea of monotropy, which is the suggestion that infants tend to direct attachment behaviours towards a single attachment figure, and that there is one special bond and this is typically between a mother and its child. The attachment being two ways is very important, and Bowlby believed that both parties should find satisfaction and enjoyment from the relationship. He suggested that babies are born programmed to behave in ways that will make attachments easier to form, for example they will display behaviour that encourages attention from adults, these include smiling and cooing etc. These are known as social releasers because the point of
The bond between a caregiver and their infant is crucial for the infant’s survival and psychological development. John Bowlby, an English Psychiatrist proposed his view on attachments, he studied emotionally disturbed children, most of these children had been separated from their families at an early age which led him to develop his theory on ‘maternal deprivation hypothesis’ in which he suggested that a child should experience a caring, warm and intimate relationship with their mother, and that children deprived of that relationship may suffer from emotion- maladjustment. Bowlby also believed that attachment is innate; he proposed that children are innately attached to the caregiver as it produces a long term benefit that helps the infant survive but also enabling them to reproduce. Bowlby also indicated that there is a crucial time in an infant’s life in where the attachment between caregiver is critical; this is called the sensitivity period, this is between 6- 24 months, (http://social.jrank.org/pages/168/Critical-Sensitive-Periods-Infant-Parent-Attachment-Critical-Sensitive-Period-Social-Development.html ) after this period if no attachment is formed it will be very hard for the child to gain an attachment after, it may take longer to form
He called this idea monotropy. He stated that the infant has only one primary caregiver to whom the child will form an attachment. However this idea has been contradicted by other psychologists who say that a child can form attachments to more than one person, for example to their mother as well as their father. A key feature of Bowlby’s theory is that the attachment formed as a child provides the child with an internal working model of relationships, which will in turn guide relationship behaviour in the future. A secure child will develop a positive internal working model of itself because of the sensitive emotional care it has received from its primary caregiver.
(Bowlby, 1969) Fonagy et al. (1993) sought to empirically test the validity of Bowlby's idea of internal working models. The results they produced supported the concept of internal working models, demonstrating that mothers who had mental representations of insecure attachments with their own parents tended to be less securely attached to their own children. In accordance with the internal working model hypothesis, Bowlby believed that secure and long term relationships with a caregiver was essential to the infants later development. Therefore, any disruption to the attachment bond before the child reaches two years of age will have negative consequences for the future.
When shown together there evidence provided a way of proving how levels of security in these relationships have substantial impact upon infants development. It is important to mention that the “strange situation” technique has received criticisms surrounding ethics with regards to intentionally inflicting distress upon infants by purposely separating them from their attachment figure however it has been argued that this situation is something that does occur naturally in an infants life. The ecological validity of the research and its ability to be generalised within different cultures has also been questioned as the study used only a sample of westernised participants. For Bowlby the IWM only had capacity to change in the period of infancy after this it is fixed for the rest of a persons life therefore a link should be able to be demonstrated between infant attachment classifications and adult attachment classifications. Continuing from the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth the adult attachment interview was developed by Main, here an adults ability to integrate childhood memories of relationships with attachment figures into working models of relationships was assessed identifying in accordance to Main three