Describe And Evaluate Bowlby's Research

Infant attachment is the first relationship a child experiences and is crucial to the child’s survival (BOOK). A mother’s response to her child will yield either a secure bond or insecurity with the infant. Parents who respond “more sensitively and responsively to the child’s distress” establish a secure bond faster than “parents of insecure children”. (Attachment and Emotion, page 475) The quality of the attachment has “profound implications for the child’s feelings of security and capacity to form trusting relationships” (Book). Simply stated, a positive early attachment will likely yield positive physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development for the child. (BOOK)

Bowlby’s monotropic theory of attachment after extensive research suggests that emotional bonds had evolutionary functions as he thought it helped a child’s survival. Attachment behaviours in both babies and their caregivers have evolved through natural selection, so the way they behave causes the infants to be biologically programmed with innate behaviours that ensures that attachment does occur. These innate species-specific attachment behaviours are social releasers i.e crying, vocalising and smiling.

The root of the mother-infant relationship as well as a child's development can be linked to John Bowlby's theory of attachment. Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst, developed the theory after running a study in which he attempted to understand the intense distress experienced by infants who had

John Bowlby and Maternal Deprivation Bowlby believed that maternal behaviour was instinctive in humans as it appears to be in animals. Mothers and their babies form an instinctive attachment to each other using genetically inherited skills such as smiling, grasping, crying and so on. If a separation occurs between mother and infant within the first few years of the child’s life, Bowlby believed that the bond would be irreversibly broken, leading to severe emotional consequences for the infant in later life. He referred to this as maternal deprivation. Bowlby claimed that maternal deprivation had the following consequences: 1.

So, in talking about attachment bonds, how are attachments developed in the first place? Starting from birth, infants are essentially unattached emotionally to any significant figure and show no social discriminatory responses to anyone specific. As the baby grows and develops, they will enter the second phase in which they can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces, voices, and smells. At this point, they are not completely attached to any one individual, despite their

By definition, “attachment is the emotional bond between an infant and the primary caregiver (Romero; Perry).” During the first eight months of life, an infant will typically form an emotional attachment to a caregiver. The kind of attachment is based on the nurture and care the infant receives. The type of attachment between an infant and a caregiver can help determine the child’s personality and development (Romero).

Attachment is the bond that links humans to vital people in their lives. This bond begins to develop early on in life. According to Berk (2012), infants can become attached to regular people in their lives before the second half of their first year of life. These early attachments are normally to the primary caregivers of the infant.

The Development of Attachment Psychological research can inform us about the development of attachments to a certain extent. Mary Ainsworth actually covered a definition explaining, how we know when an attachment has developed. This is; 'the infant tries to get close to and maintain that proximity with the caregiver, using a number of strategies to do so. E.g. clinging and signalling behaviours such as smiling, crying and calling.

A remarkable signs of being upset will be shown by the infant when the caregiver leaves but in contradiction, resistance is imminent when the latter reunites with the former. Detected in around 15% of mother-infant relationship, Insecure-Avoidant Attachment exhibits no significant bonding even around the home base. The caregiver tends no to show affection to the infant. The infant on the other hand is distant, turning away from the presence of secure base. There is no sign of protest when the caregiver is leaving.

Unlike in adults where attachment bonds may be reciprocal in characteristics, the bond between infants and the caregiver is mainly based the child's need for security, care, and protection. There is a chronological way in which attachment bonds develop and manifest themselves in a child as the child advances in age. In the first six months of a child life, pre-attachment behaviours and trends are observed in a child. In this phase, the infant cries and smiles to attract the attention of potential caregivers who they have not yet been able to discriminate or rank. In this stage, anyone in the vicinity is a potential caregiver for the child. The second phase of a child attachment development occurs between the ages of two months to the age of six months. In this phase, the child develops a discriminative instinct, and he or she is able to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar adults. The child response toward the caregivers increased at this stage and added behaviour of clinging and following are developed in the child (Cassidy & Shaver,

Attachments are formed in the very earliest months and years of life. These have a significant influence on emotional development as well as providing a template for the child as he or she grows into adulthood.

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).

Attachments are intrinsic to a child’s development both in the short term and for the duration of their lives. Infants have an innate need to develop an attachment with their mother to ensure their survival and are equipped with evolutionary characteristics called social releasers; physical social releasers such as large eyes and a small chin are found to be more aesthetically pleasing to the parents so they are more likely to care for them and behavioural social releasers for example, crying; very young infants typically only cry if they 're hungry, cold or in pain (Gross 2015 p535) this alerts the parents to an infants immediate need. At around 7 or 8 months of age children begin to make specific attachments for reasons other than survival, children display proximity maintaining behaviour normally with the mother,

The concept of infant-mother attachment is as important to the child as the birth itself. The effect this relationship has on a child shall affect that child for its entire life. A secure attachment to the mother or a primary caregiver is imperative for a child’s development. Ainsworth’s study shows that a mother is responsive to her infant’s behavioral cues which will develop into a strong infant-mother attachment. This will result in a child who can easily, without stress, be separated from his mother and without any anxiety. Of course the study shows a child with a weak infant-mother relationship will lead to mistrust, anxiety, and will never really be that close with the mother. Without the

Attachment is the foundation for a strong relationship between caregivers and children. Children usually become attached to the person who cares for them most often during their first year of life. There is secure and insecure attachment which can affect a child and their future.