Bowlby’s research Essay

The enate going hypothesis was developed in post flash world wartime and Bowlbys inquiry was based on minorren that were extremely traumatized, having possibly lost both p atomic number 18nts at war. As a result a lot of peasantren ended up in institutions which to a greater extent(prenominal) than likely had lacking(p) conditions and numerous untrained carers. It is very important to bear in intellect the context of that time as there was a national motive for family life to be recreated and stabilised by and by the war.Thus, Bowlbys maternal deprivation hypothesis was interpreted as an opposition to the employment of women with young electric shaverren and thereof the use of daylight-care facilities. It is important to acknowledge that Bowlby was primarily concerned with the welfare of fryren and that his scheme of maternal deprivation played a huge role in reforming child care practices by pointing give away the damaging effect of been cared for by numerous staf f.In the years since however, the maternal deprivation hypothesis has been for the most part discredited in light of subsequent research which suggests that some dissolution, for instance some time in a high quality day-care, whitethorn not necessarily have long-term effects on afterlife relationships. Bowlbys monotropic model of affixation has also been highly criticised as recent establish is revealing that children do form attachments with more than one adult, in particular(prenominal) with conveys, siblings and other adult carers with whom they have developed a stable relationship. interrogation has shown that children generally favour their fathers company to the company of a stranger. According to Lewis (1986) the attachment bond between a father and child is dependant on the quality of their relationship, that is, a child with a minute father that is focused on their needs will develop a stronger attachment bond with them. Nonetheless, in times of distress infants ar e more likely to seek away the comfort of their mother over their father (Lamb, 1981).Given the changing times and the steady increase in the residuum of on the job(p) mothers, it is necessary to focus more on the effects of four-fold attachments and specifically to the childs relationship with adult caregivers other than parents and relatives. Studies however, carried out by Tizard and Rees (1975) and Tizard and Hodges (1978) caution that while children can be cared for and wedded to more than one adult, having a large number of caregivers may have an perverse effect on their ability to develop close relationships.Bowlbys maternal deprivation hypothesis was further developed by the work of bloody shame Ainsworth (1969), who devised a order for observing and assessing the attachment behaviour babies display towards their mothers/caregivers. This is cognise as the Strange Situation (ED209 TV4 programme) and is essentially a method for bill a one year-olds attachment to its m other and assessing how the child acts to separation and more importantly to reunion with its mother when placed in a slightly stressful situation. Briefly, the experiment involves taking mother and child to a strange room and observing the childs responses to the introduction of a stranger, the mothers departure, reunion with the mother, leaving the child alone for a few minutes in the room (most stressful event), and leaving the child alone with the stranger. Researchers classify the maternal-child attachment relationship based on the childs behaviour during reunion with the mother.Ainsworth suggests that attachment relations fall into triple categories securely attached, unsteady-avoidant and insecure-ambivalent infants. Sometimes an additional category (disorganised) has been used. According to Ainsworth securely attached infants explore freely when their mother is present and use her as a secure base when a stranger turn outs. They greet her warmly on reunion and show a cle ar preference for her over the stranger. Children who do not behave this way, for example by clinging (insecure-ambivalent) or been more costless (insecure-avoidant) during reunion with their mother, are described as insecurely attached.Ainsworth et al (1978) believed that children who are separated from their mother, for example children who run across day-care, are likely to form insecure attachments. This is persisted by Belsky (1988) who, it is interesting to note, revised his conclusions regarding the consequences of placing children in non-maternal day-care. Initially, he believed that day care did not effect a childs attachment to his/her mother, however subsequently in his review of a number of US studies, he concluded that children who are subjected to more than twenty hours a workweek of non-maternal day-care in their first year of life are at attempt of developing insecure attachments.It is important to note that although the strange situation proficiency has been wi dely used by Belsky and others to assess the quality of a childs attachment to its caregiver, it may not however be the silk hat method for comparing children who experience day care with those who do not. Belskys conclusions regarding day-care have been disputed by Clark-Stewart (1988) who argues that the differences in attachment styles between infants attend non-maternal day-care for less than twenty hours a week and more than 20 hours a week are not large enough to conclude that working mothers put their children at risk of suffering from psychological problems.Furthermore, she points out that children who attend day care are used to separation and therefore react differently on reunion with their mothers than children who are with their mothers all day. Thus, children may appear detached not because they are insecure but because they are more independent and more accustomed to been separated from their mother (Clark-Stewart, 1988) .Like Bowlby, Ainsworth believed in a global model of attachment however, evidence from cross- heathen research on secure and insecure attachments carried out by Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) revealed cultural differences in the mother-child relationship. This evidence questions the validity of using the strange situation method to measure and compare attachment in different cultures. For example, children from Japan showed penetrative distress in the strange situation when separated from their mother, as in their culture children are never left alone at 12 months.These cultural differences highlight the importance of moving away from a universal model of attachment towards a more cultural perspective. Bowlbys ethnocentric perspective, which sees the biological mother as the all-important person for the infants first attachment, has original a lot of criticism and has been branded as a western sandwich cultural construction by some psychologists. It is interesting to note that out of 186 non-industrial societies We isner and Gallimore (1977) found that, in only five of these societies was the child (almost) solely looked after by the mother Moreover, research carried out in different countries showed the nan as having a special and unique attachment to the child due to her long life experience and wisdom (Tyszowka, 1991) thereby lending support to a more polyadic model of attachment.