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Social Isolation And It's Negative Effects On Children

Decent Essays

Socialization for humankind is extremely important, and it has a positive effect on our development. Evidence and experience has shown that social isolation, where people are deprived of social contact, has a negative effect on humans, and creates developmental issues in children. “There is dramatic evidence that children deprived of social contact do not develop all of the characteristics associated with being human. Prominent among this evidence are cases of children who have been deprived both socially and emotionally.” (Shepard, J., Sociology, pg. 94) In the book ‘Sociology’ by Jon Shepard, there are three examples given of children who grew up with social isolation and the effects it had on their lives. I personally know of a man …show more content…

But cases of extreme social isolation are not the only evidence for this generalization. Children can be affected adversely when the degree of contact with others is limited or when emotional attachments are not formed.” (Shepard, J., Sociology, pg. 96)
Research done by “Rene Spitz compared the infants in an orphanage with those in a women’s prison nursery. After two years, some of the children in the orphanage were retarded, and all were psychologically and socially underdeveloped for their age. By the age of four, a third of them had died. No such problems were observed among the prison nursery infants. Not one of them died during this period, even though the physical environment was not as clean as that of the orphanage.” (Shepard, J., Sociology, pg. 96) The main difference between these two groups of children, is that in the prison nursery, the mother’s had close contracts with their children for the first year, whilst the mothers were not present in the orphanage, and “the infant to nurse ratio was seven or eight to one, as well as being isolated from other children.” (Shepard, J., Sociology, pg.

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