Bowlbys monotropic theory of attachment

• Bowlby’s Monotropic Theory - This is the evolutionary theory of attachment. It states that attachments are innate, i.e you are born with it.
• Adaptive – attachments are an advantage, or beneficial to survival as it ensures a child is kept safe, warm and fed
• Social releasers – e.g. a cute face on a baby. These unlock the innate tendency for adults to care for a child because they activate the mammalian attachment system
• Critical period – This is the time in which an attachment can form i.e. up to 2.5 to 3 years old. Bowlby suggested that if an attachment is not formed in this time, it never will. If an attachment does not form, you will be socially, emotionally, intellectually and physically stunted. Bowlby demonstrated this in his 44 juvenile thieves study, where maternal deprivation was associated with affectionless psychopathy and mental retardation.
• Monotropy – means ‘one carer’. Bowlby suggested that you can only form one special intense attachment (this is typically but not always with the mother). This attachment is unique, stronger and different to others. Maternal deprivation, which is characterised by a lack of a mother figure during the critical period for attachment formation, results in emotional and intellectual developmental deficits i.e. affection less psychopathy and mental retardation.
• Internal working model – This is an area in the brain, a mental schema for relationships where information that allows you to know how to behave around people is stored. Internal working models are our perception of the attachment we have with our primary attachment figure. Therefore, this explains similarities in attachment patterns across families. Those who have a dysfunctional internal working model will seek out dysfunctional relationships and behave dysfunctionally within them.
• strength -

  There is supporting evidence for the importance of internal working models, as presented by Bailey et al. the researchers found that poor, insecure attachments coincided with the mothers themselves reporting poor attachments with their own parents. Therefore, this suggests that internal working models are likely to be formed during this first, initial attachment and that this has a significant impact upon the ability of children to become parents themselves later on in life.
• weakness —

  Monotropy is an example of socially sensitive research. Despite Bowlby not specifying that the primary attachment figure must be the mother, it often is (in 65% of cases). Therefore, this puts pressure on working mothers to delay their return to work in an effort to ensure that their child develops a secure attachment. Any developmental abnormalities in terms of attachment are therefore blamed on the mother by default. This suggests that the idea of monotropy may stigmatise ‘poor mothers’ and pressure them to take responsibility
• weakness -

  Monotropy may not be evident in all children. For example, Schaffer and Emerson found that a small minority of children were able to form multiple attachments from the outset. This idea is also supported by van Izjendoorn and Kronenberg, who found that monotropy is scarce in collectivist cultures where the whole family is involved in raising and looking after the child. This means that monotropy is unlikely to be a universal feature of infant-caregiver attachments, as believed by Bowlby, and so is a strictly limited explanation of some cases of attachments