Bowlby’s theory

• Bowlby was a psychologist that rejected the ideas of learning theories of attachment
• Bowlby suggests that food is only needed by infants occasionally but a child constantly needs the emotional security that an attachment provides, a young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship
• Bowlby drew from evolutionary theories, by suggesting that attachment was an evolved behaviour for humans as well as other animals
• Humans have an innate tendency to form an attachment with a caregiver. This innate tendency gives people an adaptive advantage and makes it more likely for the infant to survive
• According to bowlby, attachments are innate and adaptive, which is based on the key principles of evolutionary theory, where behaviours evolve because they enable the survival of a species
• Adaptive attachments gives our species an adaptive advantage which makes us more likely to survive. This is because if an infant has an attachment to a caregiver, they are kept safe, given food and kept warm
• Babies have innate, instinctual social releaser, which are behaviours that ‘unlock’ the innate tendency of adults to care for them
• Social releases are both physical, the typical ‘baby face’ features and body proportions, and behavioural, like cooing and smiling which maintains attention and interest from parents
• Bowlby states that babies have to form an attachment within a particular window of time, which is called the critical period
• The critical period occurs between birth and 2 1/2 years old
• During the critical period, Bowlby said the monotropic attachment would occur between the infant and the person who responded most sensitively to their needs
• Bowlby said that if attachment didn’t occur within the critical period, the child would be damaged for life
• Bowlby believed that infants form one very special attachment with their mother or a permanent mother substitute, which is also called monotropy
• Bowlby didn’t deny that multiple attachments can be formed but emphasised that the monotropic attachment is particularly significant
• According to bowlby, the more time an infant spends with their monotropic attachment figure the better for that child’s development
• Through the monotropic attachment, an infant forms an internal working model which is a special mental representation for what all future relationships will be like
• If a child’s experience is based on a loving and reliable caregiver, they’ll expect future relationships to be loved and reliable
• People tend to base their own parenting behaviour on their own experiences of being parented
• Building on the monotropic theory, bowlby additionally proposed what he called the continuity hypothesis which states that there’s consistency between early emotional experiences and adult relationships
• The early monotropic attachment provides a template for relationships which continues into adulthood
• Infants who’re strongly attached to a responsive caregiver continue to be socially and emotionally competent in adulthood
• Infants who aren’t strongly attached continue to have more social and emotional difficulties in both childhood and adulthood
• Rutter (1981) found that mothers aren’t special in the way bowlby believed. Infants display a range of attachment behaviours towards attachment figures other than their mothers and there isn’t particular attachment behaviour used specifically and exclusively towards mothers