Primary care-giver debate Flashcards
What are the key points of the argument that the mother should be the primary care-giver of an infant in relation to feeding?
The NHS recommends that if possible, infants are breastfed for at least the first six months of their lives.
Breastfeeding offers the healthiest start for infants. It protects them from numerous infections and diseases.
The NHS also claims that breastfeeding “can build a strong physical and emotional bond between mother and baby”.
Means that the infant’s mother is the individual who is going to need to be available to feed the infant. Possibly every two hours.
Means that it’s practical and essential to the infant’s survival for the mother to be the primary care - giver.
This means anyone else (including the father) is limited to a supporting care - giving role.
What are the key points of the argument that the mother shouldn’t be the primary care-giver of an infant in relation to feeding?
1950s - behaviourists promoted the view that infants were classically conditioned to associate their mother with a sense of pleasure.
Food (unconditioned stimulus) creates pleasure (unconditioned response).
The mother is associated with feedings and becomes a conditioned stimulus producing a conditioned response of pleasure.
What did Harry Harlow (1959) study and find?
Placed infant monkeys with two wire “mothers”.
One had a feeding bottle and the other was covered in soft cloth.
The monkeys spent most of their time on the cloth - covered ‘mother’.
Clinging to this ‘mother’ when frightened.
This demonstrates that food doesn’t create an emotional bond.
Contact comfort does.
What did Schaffer and Emerson (1964) find?
Primary attachments weren’t formed with the person who fed or spent more time with the infant.
Strongly attached infants had carers who responded quickly and sensitively to their ‘signals’ and who offered their child the most interaction.
What are the key points of the argument that the mother should be the primary care-giver of an infant in relation to deprivation damage?
Bowlby demonstrates that early and prolonged separation between a child and its mother can have lasting emotional effects.
Separation is likely to lead to an affectionless character:
Such a character is more likely to become a thief is also likely to have difficulty forming relationships.
Bowly developed these views into the maternal deprivation hypothesis.
Bowlby identified a central role for the mother in healthy emotional development.
What did Bowlby (1969) propose?
Attachment to one caregiver has special importance for survival.
He called this one special emotional bond monotropy.
What is monotropy?
Infants have an innate capacity and drive to attach to one primary caregiver or attachment figure.
What are the key points of the argument that the mother shouldn’t be the primary care-giver of an infant in relation to deprivation damage?
Although Bowlby used the term “maternal” in the maternal deprivation hypothesis, he didn’t mean this was exclusively the child’s mother.
He wrote:
“A child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother or permanent mother substitute - one person who steadily ‘mothers’ him.” (1953)
What did Bowlby et al (1956) show?
Presented research that some children show no ill effects from early separation.
The children in this study were ill with tuberculosis and spent years in hospital with little contact with their families.
Most of them showed few problems later in life.
What are key implications of the primary care-giver debate?
From April 2015, parents were entitled to “shared parental leave.”
This means that fathers and mothers can divide the 52-week entitlement as they see fit.
This change in social policy reflects how parents in the UK are moving away from the traditional view that the mother should be the primary care-giver of an infant.
What did the Family and Childcare Trust report?
In March 2014, the Family and Childcare Trust reported that the average annual cost of sending an infant to nursery school full-time is £9,850.
What are the conclusions of the primary care-giver debate?
The view of the mother being the primary care-giver is out of date.
There’s no conclusive evidence to suggest that the primary care-giver has to be female.
It mistakenly emphasises the fact that children have one primary carer.
The reality is that healthy development relies on multiple important relationships.
Bowlby proposed that there’s one primary attachment figure – but he also proposed that secondary attachments provide a vital emotional safety net for situations where the primary care-giver is absent.
What did Geiger (1996) show?
While women more often are the main emotional figure in a child’s life, men typically provide an equally important ingredient in development.
For example:
Fathers are generally better at providing challenging situations for their children.
