The bonding between an infant and Primary Care-Giver
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The bonding between an infant and the primary caregiver (usually the mother) is thought by many psychologists to be an important step for building future relationships and personality (LaFreniere, 1998). Psychologists originally believed that attachment was a secondary drive, the primary drive being hunger, and it was thought that the infant became attached to the mother because she was the infant's food supplier. John Bowlby developed modern attachment theory as a variation on the object-relations theory derived from Freud's theory that the infant's ties to the mother are the major influence on the development of the infant's personality. Bowlby believed attachment was an innate process, and evidence for this came from a series of experiments with monkeys separated from their mothers at birth and raised by two types of surrogates, one of which was soft and cuddly but provided no food, and one of which was made of stiff wire, but had a bottle for feeding. The young monkeys overwhelmingly chose the soft monkey over the one which supplied food, particularly when threatened. This showed that comfort was preferred over food by the infant monkeys, so food was not the driving force for attachment. Bowlby proposed that attachment is a behavioral system which can be activated when a threat is perceived, and remains active until the infant re-establishes contact with the caregiver (LaFreniere, 1998). In this system, several behaviors can function as attachment,
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at a mother should be at home while her infants are young, many mothers who stay home with young children are lonely, depressed, and not functioning well, so do not provide the best of environments for a child's development.
Symons (1998) assessed mothers and infants at birth, and at 3, 6, and 24 months postpartum to examine the impact of non-maternal care profiles on secure-base behavior, to assess maternal sensitivity using the Q-SORT measures at 24 months, and to investigate group differences in maternal stress and coping variables, infant behavior characteristics, and care variables at 24 months. The groups were homemakers, those who returned to work within six months postpartum, and those who returned to work more than six months postpartum (123). The study was undertaken because there is evidence that attachment security of infants varies as a function of maternal employment profiles and non-parental care history.
Initial assessment data was collected by telephone, personal visits, and mailback procedures (Symons, 1998, 124). The Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale was used to measure: 1) Maternal Separation Anxiety, 2) Perception of Separation Effects on the Child, and 3) Employment-Related Separation Concerns. The I
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3029
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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