The consistent finding by researchers is that children who have experienced a more secure attachment in infancy later have more positive relationships with others and are more socially skilful (Thompson, 1998, cited in Bee).
In 1995, Black and McCartney found that, as teenagers those who were securely attached to their caregiver in early childhood tended to have more intimate friendships, were more likely to be rated as leaders, and have higher self-esteem. O’Beirne and Moore (1995, cited in Bee) reported that insecure attachments in early childhood, particularly insecure avoidant attachments led to not only less supportive and positive friendships but could also lead to sexual activity at an earlier age and also involvement in riskier sexual activities.
Hazan and Shaver (1987, cited in Bee) gave a group of subjects the list of Ainsworth's three attachment types and were asked to fit themselves into a category. They found that the different attachment styles were associated with attitudes to relationships in later life. Those in the group who identified themselves as having an early “secure” attachment focused on the loving aspects of relationships when asked what they felt about them. Those who identified themselves as having had an insecure avoidant attachment felt that romantic relationships do not exist and that true love is rare. The last group, who identified themselves as having had an insecure resistant attachment believed true love to be a rare occurrence and thought that one, falls in love too easily. So, their experiences with their initial caregiver and the level of attachment they reached with them affected the way in which they perceived romantic relationships. Those who had secure attachments in which they were close to the caregiver emotionally and physically were positive towards relationships and talked of the loving, warm side to them. However, those who had experienced insecure attachments focused more on the negative aspects, this is probably because they did not experience the same emotional and physical closeness during their earliest attachments.
Bowlby (1980) introduced ‘The working model of relationships’. He explains that attachment experiences with caregivers give rise to ‘working models’. These are internalised and guide our behaviour, affects and perceptions in relationships. The earliest of these ‘working models’ are formed in infancy and early childhood. As children develop into adolescence, working models of new people and new relationships also begin to develop. These models will be directly connected to the earlier models, which affect how information about new people and new relationships is interpreted and acted upon.
Bowlby (1969) put forward one of the most influential theories of attachment. He assumed that the root of our personalities as adults could be found in the earliest of our childhood experiences. The central assumption around his ethological theory is that the attachment process has adaptive significance and helps ensure the survival of infants and their development as competent human beings. Significant failure or trauma in these early relationships will permanently shape the child’s development. Bowlby claimed that breaking the attachment bond or failing to achieve one before the child reaches the age of three can have serious effects on the child intellectually, socially and emotionally and those effects can be permanent and irreversible. Bowlby focused on the child’s first attachment to the mother as the attachment which influences later relationships and adjustment, he believed the child/mother attachment to be the earliest and arguably the most central.
In the 1950’s and 1960’s Harlow conducted a series of experiments on attachment. Harlow used rhesus monkeys that that had been reared in isolation. He then used two ‘surrogate’ monkeys, a wire model and a cloth model, both with images of monkey faces on them. The wire model had a feeding bottle attached to it and the cloth model had no food at all. The rhesus monkeys went to the cloth monkey more often that the wire one, the only time they approached the wire model was to feed. This showed that for the young infant “contact comfort” was important. Harlow’s experiment with the monkeys is often used when looking at attachment behaviours and effects. Infants deprived of maternal care developed behavioural problems, were timid and fearful and showed little interest in exploring their environment. Whereas normal monkeys played early on and explored the things around them freely as long as their mother was nearby. Harlow looked at the long-term affects of separation at an early age from the mother or the break in the attachment process. He found that such infants grew into fearful adults who avoided both social and sexual contact with their peers. Most of the females had to be artificially inseminated and when their baby was born they became hopeless mothers. Often the failure to make an attachment to her child led her to kill it, either by physical blows or by neglecting it. This led to the hypothesis that maternal deprivation in monkeys may serve as a model for child abuse in humans- the so called ‘cycle of abuse’ in which poor mothering in one generation is passed on to the next and so on. This is connected to psychoanalytic theory; this theory suggests that our future personalities can be greatly influenced by traumas in childhood.
Bowlby looked in detail at maternal deprivation and its effects on future experiences. He looked at the long-term effects that ill parenting could have by looking at a sample of juvenile delinquents. He claimed to have found that in the worst cases, the delinquents had suffered either gross neglect or abuse in early childhood. This led to Bowlby’s presumption that any early maltreatment leads to anti-social behaviour later on in life. For many, Bowlby’s view that bad experiences and failure to make secure attachments in early childhood leads to problems in later life is an unpopular view. There are always steps to restore or make attachment bonds during the course of our lives; an insecure attachment does not necessarily have to have negative consequences later on.
Many theorists have gone on to look at privation. Privation is what occurs when a child has never formed a close attachment to anyone. Rutter (1981, cited in Eynsenck) claimed that privation often leads to:
“An initial phase of clinging, dependent behaviour, followed
by attention seeking, inhibited, indiscriminate friendliness and
finally a personality characteristic by lack of guilt, an inability
to keep rules. An inability to form lasting friendships.”
Many people have challenged the view that the effects of privation and deprivation are irreversible. There are many case studies which prove that in fact many children who have experienced either maternal deprivation or privation in the early stages of their lives can go on to lead perfectly normal adult lives.
Freud and Dann (1951, cited in Eynsecnk) studied six war orphans. The orphans had experienced the loss of their parents, who had been murdered in concentration camps, when they were just a few months old. They lived together in a deportation camp on the motherless children ward until they reached three years old. At the camp the children witnessed many atrocities including the hanging of people. They had very little contact with anyone else but each other. After the camp was liberated at the end of the Second World War, the orphans were flown over to England. They had not yet developed speech properly, were unaware of language, were underweight and expressed hostility towards adults. However, they did show a general attachment to one another. Freud and Dann reported that:
“ The children’s positive feelings were centred exclusively in
their own group……they had no other wish than to be together
and became upset when they were separated from each other,
even for short moments.”
As time passed the orphans did become attached to their adult caregivers, they also developed quickly at a social level and learnt to use language too.
In 1976 Koluchova (cited in Eynsenck) studied a set of identical twins that had spent the first seven years of their lives locked away in a cellar. They were often beaten and when they were found neither one of them had any adequate language skills; they relied on gestures other than speech to communicate. When they reached nine they had been fostered and by the age of fourteen their behaviour was essentially the same as any other normal teenager. At the age of twenty, more than a decade after their ordeal, they were both reported to be above average intelligence and had built up excellent relationships with their foster families.
Both of the case studies show that despite deprivation and privation at such a young age, attachment was still made and the children progressed to have normal, healthy adult lives. These cases show the resilience of children and their ability to cope in even the most severe environments. When attachment was not possible with their primary caregivers both went on to form alternate attachments during their childhood. For the twins they attached to their foster carers and for the orphans their first real attachments were to one another.
During the first years of life a child supposedly forms an attachment to a primary caregiver, this attachment may be secure or insecure. We are led to believe by numerous theorists that this attachment forms the basis for our existence as social beings, all our ensuing relationships are said to grow from this initial attachment. Our relationship experiences and the way we adjust in social situations is apparently the result of our earliest attachment experience. This would propose that early attachment is significant in respect to later peer relationships and adjustment and to an extent I agree with this. However, as I have discussed it is not always the case that our earliest attachment shapes us. Throughout our lives there are numerous chances for us to change our attachment experience. Having an insecure attachment does not have to have a negative impact on our later attachments, we can form attachments later in life which can change this, the first attachment doesn’t necessarily have to be the most important. This was not the case for the Second World War orphans. Their initial attachments were broken when their mothers died, so according to Bowlby they should probably have had bad experiences in terms of relationships later in life, however, they did not, they formed attachments to each other and later to adult caregivers and they managed to adjust well into adulthood. Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation and later relationships is however significant when we look at negative attachments in childhood, when our earliest attachments involve abuse they can lead to serious mental impairment and an inability to function as an emotionally competent human being. The effects of a negative attachment in childhood can therefore be irreversible as stated by Bowlby.
References.
Ainsworth, M.D.S., Blehar, M., Waters, E., and Wall, S. (1978). Patterns Of Attachment. Hillsdale. New Jersey.
Bee, H. (2000). The Developing Child. (9th Ed). Allyn and Bacon. London.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Routledge. London.
Eysenck, M.W. (2000). Psychology: A Students Handbook. Psychology Press. East Sussex.
Goldberg, S. (2000). Attachment and Development. Arnold. London.
Gross, R. (1996). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour. Hodder and Stoughton. London.
Holmes, J. (1993). John Bowlby and attachment theory. Routledge. London.
Journals
Bretherton, I. (1992). Origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology ( p759-775).
Websites.
www.psychclassics.yorku.ca
