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......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 2985
Approximate Pages: 12 (260 words per double-spaced page) |