Attachment Theory on Socio-Emtionals Development of Children

Everyone has an attachment style from which they developed in the first two years of their life. This attachment style tends to stay consistent with each person throughout their lifetime and affects their social-emotional development, and thus relationships with other people. Attachment styles greatly affect the choice one makes in life partners, and how they parent their own children. It is important for everyone to gain insight on their own attachment style if they are to know their emotional limits and how to strengthen their flaws in order to develop a better-self and stronger relationships with other people (Norcross, 2011). It is even more so important for caregivers to be aware of their attachment style and how sensitively available they are to the children in their lives. How the primary caregiver responds to the child’s needs, determines the attachment style the child will acquire. To develop a secure attachment the child needs to establish confidence in a reliable caregiver. In this paper I will be talking about the behaviors and interactions that I observed while watching the film “Babies”, and what attachment styles may be formed as a result of those interactions.

This essay will compare and contrast the work of psychologists Harry Harlow and Mary Ainsworth. To compare and contrast will be to emphasise the similarities and differences of both Harlow and Ainsworth’s work on understanding attachment, to which they have both made great contribution. Attachment refers to the mutually affectionate developing bond between a mother and any other caregiver (Custance 2010). It is a bond in which the infant sees the caregiver as a protective and security figure. Failing to form any type of attachment during the earliest years of childhood is thought to lead to social and emotional developmental issues that can carry on well into adult life (Custance 2010). Attachment theory was formulated by psychoanalyst

Attachment is described as an "affectionate reciprocal relationship between an individual and another individual." Much psychological research has been carried out into the types of attachments that infants form with their caregivers, and the results gained from these studies show how early attachments can affect children whether positively or negatively.

The Attachment theory is a psychological, ethological and evolutionary theory that gives a descriptive and explanatory framework of understanding interpersonal relationship between human beings. Presented by John Bowlby, the important tenet of this theory is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to progress generally.

Attachment theory is the concept of the development, of a psychological and emotional bond, that creates a secure or insecure attachment to a caregiver. Attachment bonds are very important, in regards to personal development. Formulated by John Bowlby in the sixties, he discovered that a child’s development depends significantly, on the strong attachment they form with a caregiver. Functions of Bowlby’s attachment

Attachment theory is accepted by most psychologists and psychiatrists as the best explanation for how we develop the capacity to form relationships with others and relate to our environment. It asserts that the methods we use to relate to others, manage our needs, express our demands, and shape our expectations for the world are rooted in our relationships with our early caregivers. Through these interactions we learn to balance our feelings and need states with others and to establish our varying degrees of independence, dependence, power, and control. Attachment also impacts self-esteem through the experience of conflict with caregivers.

This report discusses and evaluates the experiment conducted by Mary Ainsworth (1970) on several types of attachments one year-olds form and can form with their parents, specifically mothers. It discusses how these attachments are formed and further explains the function of the attachments for future development. Supported ideas are included to support agreement with Ainsworth’s theories. Suggested interventions to help children develop healthy attachments concludes the report.

According to Sroufe (2005) attachment is where the child uses the primary caregiver as a secure base from which to explore, feel safe, and be comforted. As mentioned by Bowlby (1973) as cited by Sroufe (2005), individuals tend to return to trajectories of development following perturbations. Therefore, by promoting resilience and strength in the face of challenges, attachment is considered a protective factor, which emphasizes the importance for parents to

John Bowlby, who originally developed the theory of attachment, describes it as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings” (Somerville, 2009). Furthermore, there are four main characteristic of infant attachment, proximity maintenance, safe haven, secure base, and separation distress. Proximity maintenance is the desire to stay close to the people we have formed an attachment. Safe haven refers to the action of returning to the attachment figure for comfort and safety when danger or fear is present. A secure base is a place where the attachment figure acts as a base of security from which a child can explore the surrounding world. Separation distress is the anxiety that occurs when the attachment figure is absent (Cherry, 2011).

As humans, building relationships between others is a form of connecting and communicating. It is a social situation that is experienced every day through the course of a lifetime. The initial relationship that is made is between the mother and the child. This bond that connects two people is known to be called attachment. The theory of attachment begins at birth, and from that, continuing on to other relationships in family, friends, and romance. Attachment is taught through social experiences, however the relationship with the mother and her temperament are the key factors in shaping the infants attachment type, which

Attachment refers to the emotional connection that matures between infants and their primary caregivers throughout the first year of life. Attachment appears to be a universal feature of development in all cultures. Its importance has led to a continuing debate about the value of attachment in infancy on children’s later development. (Wallace & Caulfield, 1998). There are three key theories that have dominated the literature on attachment: Sigmund Freud, Konrad Lorenz and John Bowlby. Bowlby’s theory proposes justifications of how parent-infant interactions shape their adaptive behavioural capabilities in response to emotional and social involvements. (Colin, 1994). The multifaceted nature of attachment creates a dynamic theoretical perspective. There are two fundamental dimensions: attachment as a behavioural system, and as a development system. The behavioural system is the idea that human infants – like other mammals – are endowed with a specific behavioural system and the aim is to maintain close contact with their caregiver. (Sperling & Berman, 1994). Attachment as a developmental process states that parental sensitivity and the child’s ability to trust the caregiver’s accessibility is the root of a person’s formation of healthy processing. (Erickson, 1950).

John Bowlby (1969) used the word “attachment” to explain the deep-rooted bonds that develop between children and their primary caregivers. Mother–infant attachment refers primarily to the lasting bonds between an infant and his or her mother (Bowlby, 1969). During this process an infant selectively seeks his or her mother when anxious in an effort to create a “secure base” while achieving comfort and feelings of safety.

The parent-child relationship is critical to attachment theory. The quality of care provided by the parent functions to influence the child’s confidence in the availability of the parent and the qualitative organization of the parent-child relationship (Turner, 2005). Under the conditions when the child’s reaction to a sense of threat may be especially intense, the patterns indicative of the attachment relationship are revealed (Turner, 2005). The infant is innately programmed to emit stimuli, such as smiling and clinging, which in return the mother responds to (Hutchinson, 2013). According to Hutchinson (2013), the exchange between the infant and mother creates a bond of attachment depending on the response of the mother. Attachment between

It begins at a very early age: an infant crying because they are only comfortable with their mother holding them, a two year old sucking his thumb and carrying around his favorite blanket, and a 4 year old begging and pleading their father to stay with them during parent drop-off at school. This is known as attachment and is a very critical part of child development. Attachment is a strong emotional bond that forms between infant and caregiver in the second half of the child’s first year. (Parke 201) Although attachment is developed within the first year of a child’s life, it is measurable way beyond that time-frame.

Attachment theory is the idea that a child needs to form a close relationship with at least one primary caregiver. The theory proved that attachment is necessary to ensure successful social and emotional development in an infant. It is critical for this to occur in the child’s early infant years. However, failed to prove that this nurturing can only be given by a mother (Birns, 1999, p. 13). Many aspects of this theory grew out of psychoanalyst, John Bowlby’s research. There are several other factors that needed to be taken into account before the social worker reached a conclusion; such as issues surrounding poverty, social class and temperament. These factors, as well as an explanation of insecure attachment will be further explored in