Outline and Evaluate Research into Privation (12) Bowlby’s theory of attachment led him to believe that there was a critical period for attachment formation. If a separation occurs between mother and infant within the first few years of the child’s life, the bond would be irreversibly broken, leading to severe emotional consequences for the infant in later life. He referred to this disruption of the bond with the mother as maternal deprivation. A study that supports this is Genie, Bowlby saw that separation experiences in infancy and early childhood were the cause of affectionless psychopathy and delinquency, Rutter has argued that these are more likely the results of deprivation. Hodges and Tizard used a longitudinal approach to study, the effects of early experiences and later development.
This supports bowlby’s theory that failure to form attachments has an irreversible effect on emotional development. This research however can be criticised because it lacks external validity. This is due to the fact that it was a longitudinal study, and during the 16 years there would have been participant drop off. This means that there would be less participants and therefore a smaller sample size, so it cannot be generalised. There is also the chance of social desirability as some people are likely to pretend they have a better relationship with their parents/children so they seem like better parents than they think they are.
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
He also described social releasers; sucking, smiling, crying and cuddling. Bowlby states that these social releasers are innate behaviours which ensure proximity and contact with the baby's attachment figure. However, research has shown that multiple attachments may be more common than monotropy, contradicting Bowlby. Many psychologists have supported Bowlby; Hazan and Shaver (1987) aimed to discover if love in adulthood is directly related to attachment type as a child. They interviewed respondents to an advertisement and asked them to pick a statement best describing
Secondly, he suggests that infants are born with innate social releasers, such as crying and smiling, and that they also have cute faces to elicit care-giving. Besides this, Bowlby believed that there is a Critical period to form an attachment which is 2 ½ years. It is important that babies form attachment before this critical period as Bowlby said that, if this didn’t happen it will be much more difficult thereafter, and you will also be damaged for life; socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically. Furthermore, he suggested that a baby focuses its attention on one special person, which is the definition of monotropy. Bowlby claimed that infants need one special attachment relationship that is qualatively different from all others.
More than just a creation of capitalism as some theorists contend, family and the parent-child bond may have more significant implications than once believed. The results are also important for the world because it suggests that there is more in respect to biology and family than many realize. If results of the study are confirmed by further research, then social policy decisions will be made more in favor of the biological parent than previously. The methodology used in the study, while good because it uses a large base, has weaknesses in that it fails to prove causation. While the study is better than many others that make use of snowball samples and the like, it is perhaps negligent in its objectivity and use of data that cannot be fully explained or explored.
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 proposed a theory of continuation; individuals who are securely attached during infancy develop to be socially and emotionally competent in the future, on the other hand, insecurely attached children have more social and emotional difficulties later on in childhood and adulthood. The reason behind this is because the mother’s behaviour creates an internal working model of relationships that in effect leads the infants to expect the same in later relationships. According to Bowlby, children have an innate determination to become attached to a caregiver because it has long-term benefits as does Imprinting. This is because both attachment and imprinting ensures that a young child/animal stays close to a caregiver who can provide it with food, comfort and protection. In this way, attachment and imprinting are adaptive behaviours.
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, 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.