At this point, the caregivers left the room and the child's reaction of fear and crying, clearly stressed them even more. The stranger had no success in comforting the child. Mom returned to the room, picked up the child, and the reaction of the child showed immediate calming. By involving these different case scenarios with different children, Mary Ainsworth is seeking out Social Referencing regarding the different levels of attachment, in this case, particularly interested in the return of the caregiver to the room and the child's immediate calming, avoidance behavior and/or how resistant or fearful children became. She used the stranger situation experiment to study distress and difference of behavior in children when their security blanket (caregiver) is not present.
When the stranger comforts the infant after being left alone, the infant calmed down unlike in type B. Type C is the ‘insecure – anxious resistant’ category. A child who falls into this category is anxious of exploration and of strangers, even when the mother is present. When the mother leaves the infant gets extremely distressed. When the mother returns, the infant gives mixed signals.
The way in which the child behaves during the strange situation is determined by the behaviour the care giver presents to the child. For example insecure children are associated with inconsistent mothers and absent child are associated with unresponsive mothers (Oates, 2005). The desired attachment categorise is secure attachment.secure children are confident that the attachment figure will meet their needs, that they will provide a safe base. The children are easily soothed and look to the figure during distress or upset, these attachments are formed if the figure responses to their needs and is sensitive to their signals (Oates, 2005). As described by winncot ‘ good enough mothers’.
Separation anxiety 3.Reunion behaviour 4.Stranger Anxiety. One of the biggest weaknesses of Ainsworth’s experiment was that it may not just measure the attachment types of the infant but more so the quality of the relationship between the infant and caregiver. Second of all an experiment by Main and Weston found that infants behave differently depending on the parent that they are with. Therefore this could mean that SS doesn’t actually fully measure what it is meant to which automatically decreases the validity of the strange situation as a measurement of attachment type. On the other hand some may argue that the only relationship that is of relevance is your primary caregiver, which is the
Parents with intellectual limitations are often eligible for community resources and should be referred for appropriate services. Parental Depression: Parents who are depressed often are less able to provide structure or to modify the behaviors of their children. They may appear withdrawn and lack energy and thereby pay little attention to, or provide inadequate supervision of, their children. They may also lack the energy to advocate for their child's needs. Inappropriate Disciplinary Practices: There is a great deal of controversy about ways to discipline children.
When an infant has had an attachment and it has been broken. There is research done into deprivation by Bowlby. This is his Maternal deprivation hypothesis, which stated the belief that if an infant was unable to build a "warm, intimate, continuous relationship with its mother", it would then result in having difficulties building relationships with other people and also the risk of behavioural disorders. This hypothesis says that relationships that are discontinuous or where there are separations becomes unstable which causes the development of the relationship to be disrupted. It focuses on how important an relationship between a mother and child is.
Child decides it is fruitless to rely upon others to meet his attachment needs and attempts to meet them himself, gets lost in his own world & avoids emotional connection. | Lacks engagement and tends to be physically & emotionally distant in relationships. More comfortable with distance & separateness and may appear self-centred & unresponsive to other people’s needs. | Insecure Ambivalent | Mum responds unpredictably, insensitive to child’s signals. Child tends to be clingy, anxious and fearful, never knowing what to expect.
Personality is characterized and shaped by the relationship that he or she had with their parents as a child and to present day. It is evident that Allison’s behavior is influenced by her relationship with her parents. Since she is ignored largely by her parents, Allison’s needs were not met by nurturing parents and this results in Allison experiencing extreme feelings of uselessness, self doubt, and hesitancy. Therefore, Allison suffers from basic anxiety, as she has feelings of helplessness and insecurity. As a child (and even now when Allison is a teenager,) Allison feels alone and isolated in a hostile environment because her parents and (and even her peers,) are not caring towards her, hence the reason why she is so reserved and sensitive.
15% were ‘insecure resistant’ (type c)- uneasy around their mother and upset if she left. They resisted strangers and were also hard to comfort when their mother returned. Takahashi found that 68 % of the infants were classified as type b, almost identical to the original American sample. None of the infants were classed as type a. 32% were classified as type
Resistant Attachment Resistant attachment is the attachment pattern characterizing infants who remain close to the parent and fail to explore before separation, then are usually distressed when the parent leaves. When the parent returns the infant combines clinginess with angry, resistive behavior. This theory of resistant attachment really interested me because I have witnessed it plenty of times with my boyfriend’s nephew, Noah, and his sister-in-law, Elizavette. When first reading this chapter I thought they had a secure attachment but once I dug a little deeper and we discussed it in class I realized that it was not secure at all. Noah as an infant was very attached to his mother, Elizavette.