Attachment Development and the Influence of Daycare on Attachments

The development of attachment relationships between children and parents constitutes one of the most important aspects of human social and emotional development. For years, the predominant view of infant-caregiver attachment was that it was a “secondary drive” i.e. that any attachment formed was because of the infant associating the caregiver with providing for physical needs such as hunger. However, John Bowlby argued that attachment is an innate primary drive in the infant. This theory was reinforced by Harlow & Zimmerman’s (1959) experiment involving baby monkeys who had been separated form their mothers and offered two surrogate “mothers”. One of these was made of wire, but had a nipple attached which provided food. The other was made of soft cloth and provided no nutrition. The results showed that the monkeys fed from the “wire mother” but cuddled up to the “soft cloth mother” and ran to “her” when frightened. It therefore seemed reasonable to conclude that the “soft cloth mother” provided “contact comfort” and satisfied a basic or primary need. Regardless however of whether attachment behaviour is instinctual or goal orientated, it results in the infant maintaining proximity to the parent.
Bowlby also recognised that the attachment was not purely dependent upon the social and emotional interaction between the infant and caregiver. It is also heavily dependent upon the infant’s cognitive development in terms of being able to represent an object that is not physically present. He based his argument on Piaget’s contention that this level of object permanence is not acquired until the infant is about eight months old. Thus, Bowlby suggested that attachment occurs in stages so as to allow for the needed cognitive development which enables the infant to miss an attachment figure and hence, demonstrate attachment behaviour. Bowlby claims that during the first phase (0-2 months) infants begin to develop a repertoire of signals, of which the cry is most

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