Critically discuss the implications of attachment theory for different forms of childcare

TMA 03

Developmental psychologists are interested in the study of the individual from conception to old age. One area of particular interest is the significance of parent-child bonding. Attachment can be defined as ‘an enduring bond of affection directed towards a specific individual’ (Santrock, 2001). The nature of the relationship between early attachment and later development is a central issue in developmental psychology and, given the increasing proportion of women with young children that go out to work, of specific interest is the quality of care-giving that infants receive. This paper will firstly describe the essential features of the attachment theory followed by a critical evaluation of John Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis. An examination will be made of the work carried out by Mary Ainsworth (1978) on the nature of attachment relationships and finally an evaluation of the ways in which these theories and research implicate different forms of childcare will be explored.

John Bowlby (1930-80), was the key figure in the development of attachment theory; the theory that children have a drive to feel secure by forming an emotional bond with a primary care giver. Bowlby (1951) developed his theory of maternal deprivation based on research he carried out on juvenile delinquents who had experienced long periods of separation from their primary care giver in the first few years of their lives. What he concluded based on that research was that maternal deprivation could seriously affect the mental health of a child and moreover that an infant’s failure to attach to one specific care-giver could cause irreparable damage. This distinct preference exclusively for one specific person, preferably the biological mother, is known as monotropism.

Although Bowlby was initially influenced by the psychoanalytic tradition, in later years he also became heavily influenced by concepts from ethology and particularly that of imprinting (Lorenz, 1966), whereby the young of many species form early attachments to their parents. He argues that the tendency for the young to cling to or be ‘imprinted on’ their mothers can be seen in many other animal species and that by keeping the young close to their mothers enables them to survive.

In addition Bowlby (1951) felt that there was a critical period in the formation of attachments. He believed that between the age of six months and three years it was essential for children to receive continuous love from a primary caregiver and that prolonged separation between the child and their primary caregiver would not only cause distress but would have serious outcomes for the child. Evidence to support this view of Bowlby’s comes from observations of young children in hospitals. These studies showed that children, when separated from their mothers, exhibited a sequence of behaviour in which distress was initially accompanied by protest, followed by despair and eventually denial and emotional detachment from the mother (James and Joyce Robertson, 1967-73). This behaviour of denial and emotional detachment is characteristic of the insecure attachment classification.

Furthermore, research carried out by William Goldfarb (1940) suggests an association between the nature of early attachment to a caregiver and a child’s social behaviour in later development. Goldfarb (1940) studied the effects that institutionalised child-care has on later development. He compared children who had been cared for in an institution until the age of three and a half before been fostered to children who had been fostered earlier in life and found that those who had lived in an institution had poor language skills, craved adult affection and were more prone to behaviour problems than the children that had not lived in an institution.

Additionally, early research carried out by Harlow and Harlow (1969) seemed to support the maternal deprivation hypothesis. Initially they found that baby monkeys raised without their mothers showed aggressive behaviour and had problems caring for their offspring, however, subsequent research found that the consequences of been raised without their mothers (maternal deprivation) could be overcome. Harlow and Suami (1972) found that when baby monkeys are raised without mothers but in the company of other babies, many of the problems reported in Harlow’s earlier study in terms of the monkey’s later social development were not present. Furthermore, other research supports the ...

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The maternal deprivation hypothesis was developed in post second world wartime and Bowlby’s research was based on children that were extremely traumatized, having possibly lost both parents at war. As a result a lot of children ended up in institutions which more than likely had substandard conditions and numerous untrained carers. It is very important to bear in mind the context of that time as there was a national need for family life to be recreated and stabilised after the war. Thus, Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis was interpreted as an opposition to the employment of women with young children and therefore the use of day-care facilities. It is important to acknowledge that Bowlby was primarily concerned with the welfare of children and that his theory of maternal deprivation played a huge role in reforming child care practices by pointing out the damaging effect of been cared for by numerous staff.

In the years since however, the maternal deprivation hypothesis has been largely discredited in light of subsequent research which suggests that some separation, for example some time in a high quality day-care, may not necessarily have long-term effects on future relationships. Bowlbys monotropic model of attachment has also been highly criticised as recent evidence is revealing that children do form attachments with more than one adult, in particular with fathers, siblings and other adult carers with whom they have developed a stable relationship. Research has shown that children generally favour their father’s 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 sensitive father that is focused on their needs will develop a stronger attachment bond with them. Nonetheless, in times of distress infants are more likely to seek out the comfort of their mother over their father (Lamb, 1981).

Given the changing times and the steady increase in the proportion of working mothers, it is necessary to focus more on the effects of multiple attachments and specifically to the child’s 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 attached to more than one adult, having a large number of caregivers may have an adverse effect on their ability to develop close relationships.

Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis was further developed by the work of Mary Ainsworth (1969), who devised a method for observing and assessing the attachment behaviour babies’ display towards their mothers/caregivers. This is known as the Strange Situation (ED209 TV4 programme) and is essentially a method for measuring a one year-old’s attachment to its mother and assessing how the child reacts 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 child's responses to the introduction of a stranger, the mother's 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 child’s behaviour during reunion with the mother.

Ainsworth suggests that attachment relations fall into three categories: securely attached, insecure-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 appears. They greet her warmly on reunion and show a clear preference for her over the stranger. Children who do not behave this way, for example by clinging (insecure-ambivalent) or been more detached (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 attend day-care, are likely to form insecure attachments. This is supported 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 child’s 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 week of non-maternal day-care in their first year of life are at risk of developing insecure attachments.

It is important to note that although the strange situation technique has been widely used by Belsky and others to assess the quality of a child’s attachment to its caregiver, it may not however be the best method for comparing children who experience day care with those who do not. Belsky’s conclusions regarding day-care have been disputed by Clark-Stewart (1988) who argues that the differences in attachment styles between infants attending 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 universal model of attachment however, evidence from cross-cultural 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 intense distress in the strange situation when separated from their mother, as in their culture children are never left alone at twelve months.

These cultural differences highlight the importance of moving away from a universal model of attachment towards a more cultural perspective. Bowlby’s ethnocentric perspective, which sees the biological mother as the all-important person for the infants first attachment, has received a lot of criticism and has been branded as a Western cultural construction by some psychologists. It is interesting to note that out of 186 non-industrial societies Weisner 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 grandmother 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.

Studies carried out at the Thomas Coram Research Unit took into consideration factors other than separation from the mother when evaluating the consequences of childcare. These included the quality of care provided, staff turnover and their childcare experience. Melhuish et al (1990a, 1990b) assessed and compared children’s development in different situations; children cared for by a relative, children cared for by a childminder and children placed in a nursery. There were assessed at 18 months old and again after they had been in one of the day-care environments for several months. Interestingly, their findings were both positive and negative for different forms of childcare. For example children placed in nurseries were found on one hand to be more empathic with others, better at sharing and participating in groups and on the other hand were found to be more aggressive, moody and less attentive in comparison to the children in alternative childcare. Researchers contribute some of the negative findings for children in nurseries to the poor quality of care, high turnover of staff and low-level adult-child interaction. It is interesting to note that in other studies where the quality of care was high, the differences found between children in day care nurseries and children not in day care were positive and more in favour of the day-care children (ED209 TV4 programme)

It is important to bear in mind that different kinds of families may choose different kinds of day-care for example parents who use full-time infant care may be under more financial strain than other parents. Additionally, in some cases a child that is extremely outgoing and sociable may be better suited to attending day care whereas a shyer, less confident child may be better off in their home environment. This notion of taking individual differences and circumstances into account is encapsulated in the ‘goodness of fit’ approach (Thomas and Chess, 1977). Evidence has shown that the ‘goodness of fit’ between a child’s behaviour and the day-care environment in which attachment takes place does influence the attachment styles that children develop (Stevenson and Oates, 1994; Woodhead, 1994)

Furthermore, research shows that infants own characteristics influence their mothers responsiveness, and thus indirectly the security of attachment. Crockenburg (1981) found that babies who were irritable after birth were less likely to attract responsive care from their mother and also less likely to develop a secure attachment with their mothers as assessed in the strange situation. The transactional model (Oates, 1994) takes into account this bi-directional reciprocal relationship between caregivers and their children, thereby supporting a more interactive model of attachment which better explains the active contribution of children, their caregivers and the day-care context in developing attachment styles of individuals.

The foregoing discussion clearly shows that it’s not possible generalise about the implications of day-care on attachment. There are many factors to be taken into account for example the circumstances surrounding a mother’s decision to work full time, the nature and age of the child and the different forms of child care available. As has been discussed, it is very important to match or find a ‘good fit’ between the child’s behaviour and the type of care he/she receives. Fortunately, the body of recent research and evidence supports this view and highlights the shift in developmental psychology away from the universal monotropic model of attachment towards a more flexible perspective which emphasises the importance individual differences and cultural context, namely that of the social cultural perspective. Nonetheless, the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth has been very important and cannot be disregarded. It has provided a base for future researchers to explore attachment and different forms of childcare which is and will continue to be a central issue in developmental psychology.

References

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