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Developmental Psychology: Never Let Me Go Essay

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In Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, the main character, Kathy, and the rest of the characters are raised in Hailsham, a very special type of school. The kids who are raised at Hailsham do not have any parents because they are clones. Essentially, the teachers or the guardians, as they are called in the book, are their parents. Yet, the guardians raise the kids in a very particular way. The guardians are not affectionate towards the children, as most parents would be, and they raise them in an extremely structured setting. The guardians do not bond with the children because, although the guardians at Hailsham believe the kids are more than just clones, society still looks at them as creatures. The way the guardians raise the children at …show more content…

(http://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development) The guardians understood that the children were born just to die at a young age. They understood that many people looked at them as monsters and not as human beings. With that in mind, the guardians did not get emotionally attached to the children. In The Effects of Early Social-Emotional and Relationship Experience on the Development of Young Orphanage Children, the main focus is on how children in orphanages react to certain types of caregivers. The caregivers who worked with the children at the orphanage seem to have the same concerns as the guardians working at Hailsham. On page 108 it says, “ Staff initially wondered if it was a good idea for children to have close relationships with caregivers when many would go to harsher and less affectionate and responsive environments in the future”. People in society are not as accepting of the clones as the guardians are, so despite the fact that the guardians seem distant from the children, this was done just to prepare the children for the “harsher” future. The attachment theory is a theory proposed by John Bowlby. The theory basically states that infants need to be attached to someone in order to have successful relationships as they grow older. Bowlby says, “Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space”

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