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Friday 5 November 2010

Emotional Ties

The bonding process between the mother and baby within the first few months of life is deemed to be crucial in teaching the child how to form loving relationships. If there is a breakdown of this connection it has been seen to have a profound affect on general behaviour and  the childs ability to cope with relationships through life.

  British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby(1969,1973,1980) developed a theory looking at the creation and destruction of emotional ties between  babies and their mothers. Bowlby researched the effect on the child of separation  from the carer. He indicates that the childs predisposition is to become attached to the carer, which manifests itself in behaviours aimed at maintaining proximity or stimulating interaction (eg.,crying ,smiling ,following, clinging).

This evolutionary theory of attachment suggests the child comes into the world pre-programmed to form attachments with others as a survival tactic as at this stage it is the mother that supplies the sustenance. He believed that this close proximity and bonding was an important aspect of the infants development not just in the early stages but in the long term.
 Many studies have been carried out to look into the long term effects of this lack of bonding between the mother and child and it is recognised that even mild depressive symptoms can impact very significantly on not just this bond but even more importantly the way in which all subsequent relationships are viewed.
Moehler E.(2006)

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale

This is a post-partum  questionnaire that was developed by healthcare experts to determine the level of postnatal depression,if any,was evident.

1 comment:

  1. I have loads of psychology essays on Bowlby and attachment theories somewhere. Must try to dig them out for you if they would be helpful x

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