The second study is by Tizard and Hodges. This was a longitudinal study was based on 65 children who had been placed in an institution when they were less than 4 months old. There was an explicit policy in the institution against care givers forming attachments with the children, and before the age of four, the children had an average of fifty different caregivers. This suggested that the children had not formed any specific attachments.
By the age of four, twenty four children had been adopted, fifteen had gone to their natural homes, and the rest remained in the institution. The children were assessed at ages 4, 8 and 16. In the final analysis, it was found that the adopted children generally had close attachments to their parents and good family relationships, but was not for children who were back in their natural homes. This is because the parent’s probably had problems in the first place.
The conclusion was that the two ex-institution groups, adopted and restored, differed within their family relationships. However, there were similarities between the two groups outside the family, when interacting with other adult’s and peers. Therefore it was concluded that early detrimental effects of institutionalization were seen to be improved when forming attachments, but there were also lasting effects.
4c.Secure attachments is claimed to be important for the emotional and social development of the child. So, as while in day care, the child would be separated from there parents, so we would expect to find effects. Clarke Stewart (1994) investigated the relationship between time spent in day care and quality attachment in over 500 children. They found that 15 month old children who experienced ‘high intensity’ childcare were equally distressed when separated from their mothers in the strange situation as ‘low intensity’ children. This suggests that attachment was not affected by the experiences of separation.
A recent study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health Care and Human development examined over 1000 infants and their mothers at age 6 months and again at age 15 months. The mothers were interviewed and the infants were observed at home and, where possible, in day care. The findings showed that those infants with extensive day care experience did not differ from infants without day care in terms of the distress they exhibited during separations from their mother in the strange situation, this suggests that the day care experience had no immediate effects on attachment. Also, the study did not find any difference in terms of the age of the infants when they first started day care, the amount of day care, or the type of day care. However, they did find effects in relation to maternal sensitivity or responsiveness. Infants were less likely to be secure when low maternal sensitivity or responsiveness was combined with poor quality childcare, or more than one care arrangement. In other words, a build up of negative factors did create problems.
