Evaluate the evidence for the claim that the early relationship of the mother is of particular importance to the later development of the child.

Michelle Lowe

The view that a parent-child relationship plays a very important role in a child’s development is very widely accepted and has far reaching implications for social policy and practice in the area of social care. The area of factors which affect the cognitive, social and emotional development of a child is extremely broad, including such issues as the importance of attachment and caregiver influence on for example, emotional blunting, mental health problems aggressive and anti-social behaviour and many other areas. It is because of this and the limitation of words that this essay will be focusing mainly on maternal deprivation causing behavioural, emotional and social difficulties using attachment theory, and not going into depth on other common theoretical approaches to the study of child-parent relationships such as psychoanalytical theory and social learning theory.

One of the most influential researchers in this area is John Bowlby who looked at the short-term and long-term effects when child-mother relationships break-up. He is particularly noted for development of the maternal deprivation hypothesis which concerned a child’s need for love and the provision of love by the mother. A mother’s love was seen not only as desirable but also as required in order for the healthy development of the child. In 1946 Bowlby noted the correlation between institutional care (i.e. orphanage), separation from the mother and emotional disorders or delinquent behaviour. These findings were interpreted as indicating the child’s attachment to the mother and showing separation from the mother especially in the first five years of life can be considered to send the child into a sense of bereavement therefore causing them to show signs of grief and distress in the short-term. According to Bowlby this distress caused by a perceived deficiency in love could then lead to more long-term effects in the child such as behavioural difficulties or a psychiatric disorder.

This is a preview of the whole essay

This maternal deprivation hypothesis had a profound influence on social policy and practice, public opinion and public behaviour at the time. It led to changes in maternity hospitals where previously, children were taken away from the mother soon after birth because it was seen as too stressful. Criticism comes mainly from the time period in which the theory was introduced, just after the end of the Second World War. Many women were still working in what were in pre-war years, male jobs. Some were reluctant to leave this paid employment and Bowlby’s research was used to reinforce the assumption that a woman’s place was in the home. Further criticism of this theory comes from Rutter (1981) who claimed that “Bowlby increased the importance on the mother’s role and regarded love as the only important element in child rearing”. The father’s role in the child’s upbringing was minimised if not totally ignored, which discouraged fathers to become actively involved in childcare and dismissed the importance of the father-child relationship.

There is however some support for this theory, observations by Spitz on institutional care, found that infants in foundling homes had a higher mortality rate and were more susceptible to infections than infants raised in institutions where the mother was present. It was also found that there appeared to be a greater incidence of mental, social and linguistic retardation in foundling homes. Spitz noted that infants separated from mothers at an early age were frequently displayed lethargy, apathy and withdrawal. This observation was likened to Bowlby’s grief reaction at the loss of the relationship with the mother. Alternatively however, this apparent apathy, decreased learning and increased illness could be explained by the fact that in foundling institutions the carer to child ratio is low not allowing therefore a reciprocal and stable attachment to form, making it very difficult for adequate stimulation and individual care to be provided at the standard it would be with the mother present. Spitz himself later stated that it was likely the lack of stimulation and undivided care caused the differences in these groups.

Experimentation on baby rhesus monkey’s by Harlow and Harlow disputed an area of Bowlby’s argument; they found that infants suffered little affects from the loss of their natural mother as long as they have a surrogate caregiver responsive to their needs, however when the infant monkey’s were separated and not provided with a surrogate, they displayed signs of acute anxiety and distress. It was also observed that individuals developed deviant social and emotional behaviours, failing to relate to other monkeys or engage in normal sexual activities. Females were therefore very hard to impregnate and when able to produce offspring, appeared to be totally inept at childcare, frequently rejecting them or killing them. Further research by Harlow indicated that monkey’s can develop normally even without a mother figure as long as they have other young monkeys to interact with, similarly, if young monkeys are separated from peers but not mother, behaviour is seen to be lacking in affection and highly aggressive. This research contradicts the view that the mother is a key figure in the healthy development of a child and suggests the role of the mother in early attachment has little impact on the later development of the child. The findings from Harlow must however be cautiously viewed as it’s impossible to generalise animal behaviour to human behaviour because of the complexity and unpredictability of human behaviour and cognitive reasoning.

Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation although flawed, can be expanded upon with more recent interpretations of attachment theory, where the emotional ties between children and their caregivers as first described by Bowlby in the maternal case, can be seen to have a biological basis which can be best described from an evolutionary perspective. The importance of the early relationship with the parent is derived from the dependence of a child’s survival on the care they receive from adults. Adults provide food, shelter and warmth for the child when it has not developed the motor skills or cognitive thinking advanced enough for it to be able to carry out these functions of life independently. This idea is that a child’s has a genetic disposition for behaviour which maintains and enhances caregiver proximity. Attachment theory suggests the child uses the attachment figure to develop a working model of relationships which reflect its personal experience. This would mean that the quality of early relationships with the primary caregiver will shape the child’s expectations and beliefs towards future social relationships, so satisfying primary attachment relationships i.e. with the father will provide the child with a sense of emotional security, so future positive interactions with others will be expected. The reverse side of this being that those children who experience what they perceive to be rejection in early relationships, will view themselves as unworthy of love and will expect further rejections and act in accordance with those expectations. According to Bowlby this would be the expression of delinquent behaviour, the inability to form future relationships and development of psychopathology in later life.

Research from Mary Ainsworth attempts to classify infants into certain attachment types according to responses to given situations. Ainsworth showed that a child’s categorised attachment type, was influenced by the mother’s behaviour towards the child. Research on adults showed links between type of childhood attachment and typical adult behaviour, leading to the idea that the relationship to mother (as influencing attachment type) will follow to influence development of adult behaviour. For example, infants described as securely attached, were able in adult life to value attachments and talk realistically about them. Those with a positive relationship with the parents acknowledged and accepted faults. Those with a negative relationship were able to acknowledge the unhappiness and develop an understanding of it, enabling them to establish new, important relationships. Those classified as dependent were seen in adult life to be caught in old struggles with parents, lacking a sense of personal identity away from their family and were unable to evaluate their role within society. This evidence does not however take into account the role of an individual’s personality and temperament. Thomas and Chess identified three temperament types; Easy, difficult and slow to warm up. They found these temperamental patterns persisted over time and were influential in adjusting to settings. This suggests that some of the concordance between childhood attachment types and adult behaviour should be put down individual temperament and personality.

The fact that the idea that a mother’s interaction with her child affects later development is widely accepted would suggest that this theory does contain some truth. This however is not always the case as history dictates that psychological research is open to interpretation towards the creation of certain ideals. There is also contrary evidence, that it is not actually the direct love and attention given by the mother that is beneficial for future development but that it is the stimulation that the mother through showing love provides and that this stimulation can be provided by others such as the father or peers. More evidence that stimulation is important for development comes from Goldfarb who found the longer a child stays in institutionalised care, the more behind they are in virtually all aspects of development. It can therefore be suggested that although the formation of a strong relationship with the mother is important not least for survival and protection for development to exist, this does not necessarily have to come from the natural mother and is also influenced by others, the child’s temperament and reactions to given stimuli.

References

BRANTHWAITE, A. and ROGERS, D. (1985) Children Growing Up. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

CARLSON, N. R., MARTIN, G. N. and BUSKIST, W. (2004) Psychology. Great Britain: Pearson Education Limited.

GOLDBERG, S. (1999) Recent Developments in Attachment Theory and Research. In A. SLATER. and D. MUIR. (Eds) Developmental Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

SHAFFER, D. R. (1999) Developmental Psychology – Childhood and Adolescence. USA: Brooks and Cole Publishing Company.