Bowlbys theory Flashcards
Explain bowlbys monotropic theory
Placed emphasis on a child’s attachment to one particular caregiver and believed that the childs attachment to this one caregiver is different and more important than others and this caregiver didnt have to be the biological mother. The lore time a baby spent with this mother figure the better.
Social releases
Bowlby suggested that babies are born with a set of innate ‘cute’ behaviours like smiling, cooing and gripping and that these encourage attention from adults. These social rrlrsders purpose is to aft8vatentue adult attachment system
Bowlby recognised that attachment was a..?
Reciprocal process. Both mothers and babies have an innate predisposition to become attached and social releasers trigger that response in caregivers
Bowlby proposer that theres a critical period around..?
Two years when the infact attachment system is active. In fact bowlby viewed this as more of a sensitive period-a child is maximally sensitive at the age of 2 but if an attachment isnt formed in this time, the child will find it much harder to form one later.
Explain the internal working model
Bowlby proposed that a child forms a mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver. This is called internal working model because it serves as a model for what relationships are like. Hence it has a powerful effect on the nature of the child’s future relationships. It also affects the child’s later ability to be a parent themselves. People tend to base their parenting behaviour on their own experiences of being parented. This explains why children of functional families tend to have similar families themselves.
AO3- mixed evidence for monotropy
Bowlby believes that a baby will form one special attachment to their primary caregiver and only after this attachment was established could the baby develop multiple attachments later on. However, Schaffer and Emerson found that most babies did attach to one person first but they also found a significant minority appeared able to form multiple attachments at the same time.
AO3-support from internal working models
The idea of internal working models is testable because it predicts that patterns of attachment will be passed from one generation to the next. Bailey et al. tested this idea. They assessed 99 mothers with one-year old babies on the quality of their attachment to their mothers using a standard interview procedure. The researchers also assessed the attachment of the babies to the mothers by observation. It was found that the mothers who reported poor attachments to their own parents in their interviews were much more likely to have children classified as poor according to the observations.
AO3- Monotropy is a socially sensitive idea
Monotropy is a controversial idea because it has major implications for the lifestyle choices mothers make when their children are young. The law of accumulated separation states that having substantial time apart from a primary attachment figure risks a poor quality attachment that will disadvantage the child in a range of ways later. Feminist, Burman states that this places a terrible burden of responsibility for mothers, setting them up to take the blame for anything that goes wrong in their child’s life. It also pushes mothers into particular lifestyle choices like not returning to work when a child is born. This was not Bowlby’s intention - he saw himself as boosting the mother’s status by emphasising the importance of her role
