Psycology Debate-psycodynamic-Mother As A PCG Flashcards
What is the structure of the debate?
Influence on future relationships-for and agaisnt
-feeding
-sex role stereotypes
INFLUENCE ONFUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-FOR-Why should the mother be the PCG?
Her relationship with the child could influence the quality of the child’s future relationships.
-Bowlbys mono tropic theory suggests one attachment with the mother is a unique and special.
-Through montropic attatchment the infant forms an internal working model with their PCG.
-All the child’s future relationships will be based on this.
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-FOR-Research study what they did?
Bailey
-assess 99 mothers and their one year olds and the quality of their attachment through observations and interviews.
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-FOR-Research-what they found?
They discovered that the mothers who reported poor attachment with their own parents were more likely to have children with a poor attachment to them.
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-FOR what are the implications of this?
-One positive social implication
is that it highlights the importance of the mother-child relationship - it has positive applications to society as it could influence the policy of paid maternity leave to reduce maternal deprivation in the critical period so children have a healthier emotional development.
-Therefore helping them develop healthy attachments within their future relationships
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-FOR-Link Therefore the mother should be the PCG
-as the quality of the relationship with the mother is more important than any other ,because the quality of the relationship is responsible for the development of the internal work model
-which forms a template for what relationships are like for the child therefore impacting the quality of their future relationships
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-AGAINST-Why should the mother not be the PCG?
Research suggest the relationship between the mother and child is over emphasised in the extent that impacts the child’s future relationships.
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-Against-Research-what did they do?
-zimmeraims research
-you conducted a longitudinal study and assessed attachment type between 12 to 18 months and then revisited them at 16 years
-using interviews to determine if attachment types in infancy determined relationships into adulthood.
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-What they found?
They found little relationship between the quality of infant attachment and attachment of adolescence with parents
Contradicting Bobby’s idea of the internal working model
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-AGAISNT-Implication
This has negative ethical implications-as it over estimates the importance of the mother’s presence in the critical period
-The mother could have made unnecessary sacrifices in their lives for example not having a social life in order to be with their child.
-And also may have put an excessive amount of pressure on themselves-Neg impact on MH
INFLUENCE ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS-AGAINST-Link Therefore the mother does not need to be the PCG because…
The quality of mother-child relationship doesn’t greatly affect quality of future relationships-diminishing importance of mother as PCG.
FEEDING-FOR-why should the mother be the PCG
Because they can provide breastmilk which can help to provide the baby with several health benefits that may not obtain just by using formula.
FEEDING-FOR-Research study-what does the NHS suggest?
-States BM is a great source of nutrition for most babies and as the baby grows, the mother’s breastmilk will change to meet the baby’s nutritional needs.
For example, the -colostrum.
It is produced in low quantities the first few days postpartum and is rich in immunogenic components help protect babies against illness .
-Breastmilk shares antibodies from the mother with her baby-help baby develop strong immune system cells such as regulatory cells and monocytes.
FEEDING-FOR-Implications
One posstive economic implication is that because the mothers are providing milk for their babies it is more financially sustainable as opposed to having to coniuesly buy formula.
-Therefore can have more money to spend on other items to aid the baby’s upbringing such as toys.improving quality of their development .
FEEDING FOR-Link
-breastfeeding helps improve the physical health of the baby as they have a lower risk of asthma, obesity and sudden infant death syndrome compared to babies who are not breastfed and is also financially beneficial for family.
FEEDING-AGAISNT-Why should the mother not be the PCG?
-Anyone can give comfort as opposed to just the mother alone.
FEEDING-AGAISNT-Research-what did they do?
Simply psycology-Harlow suggested that infants have an innate need to cling to something for comfort
-hollows separated infant monkeys and placed them in cages with access to 2 surrogate mother one made of wire and one covered in soft cloth.
-In the 1st group the soft cloth mother provided no food,while the wire mother provided milk.
FEEDING-AGAINST-Research what did they find?
-They found that both groups of monkeys spent more time with the cloth mother even without milk
-And the infant would only go to the wire mother when hungry.
-Once fed it returned to the cloth mother most of the day.
FEEDING-AGAINST-What is a weakness of this study?
-limited sample-only conducted on monkeys-not an accurate reprentation of how human form form attatchment
-difficult to generalise findings to wider population of humans hence lowers the population validity.
FEEDING-AGAISNT-Link,therefore the mother should not be the PCG because…
As it contradicts the learning theory of attatchment and gives support to the evolutionary theory ofattatchment
-that the security of caregiver is more important than the provision of food and anyone can provide this comfort.
-however this may not be true for humans as the study was conducted on animals.
SEX ROLE STERORTYPES-FOR-Why should the mother be the PCG?
-biologically the mothers brains are designed to become more alert to the response of their infants cry whereas men’s brains tend to remain is a restive state.
SEX ROLE STEROYTYPES-Research-what they did?
-Researchers played a recording of white noise,interperpesed with the sound of an infant crying to men and women.
-The patterns of brain activity were recorded by a functional magnetic resonance imaging.
SEX ROLE-FOR-What did they find?
-They found that the brain activity of men and women differed-as they reacted differently to infant cries.
-Dorsal media prefrontal and posterior cingulate areas(involved in mind wandering)-remained active in men during exposure to cries whereas in women activity decreased.
