ATTACHMENT

                                   

Various psychologists tried to explain the phenomenon of attachment and love between a mother and her baby. According to the podcast about attachment (Psychology), from the time they are born, babies are especially sensitive to the social signals they get from other people. It is really very interesting how babies become the most important persons in their mothers’ lives, and how they develop this attachment. In psychology, I have come up with two explanations of attachment.

The first one is Freud’s drive-reduction explanation. According to this explanation, “attachment to the mother originates in the satisfied need for nourishment”. Babies are attached  to their mothers because they need their care and love. However, this explanation was not well-supported by research.

The second explanation was suggested by John Bowlby, who is considered the founder of   attachment theory. He thinks that attachment has evolutionary basis; “it provides sense of security and safe base from which to explore the world”. Babies are born helpless and dependent and they need to be protected and taken care of. It is part of their evolutionary background that parents take care of their babies and babies are attached to their parents. This theory was strongly supported by research.

There was an experiment with monkeys carried out by Harry Harlow. He separated baby monkeys from their mother but took care that all their needs were satisfied. As a result, the experiment had a negative effect on the baby monkeys’ psychological development; as they grew up they were easily scared and stressed. Besides, they were completely unable to raise new generation themselves. Harlow also discovered that there can be various substitutes for a mother. He did an experiment with two types of substitutes. One of them was a “wire mother” which gave food, the other one did not provide food but it looked much more like a real mother; it was covered with soft fur, it had a face like a monkey. And it was discovered that, although baby monkeys went to get food from the “wire mother”, they preferred spending most of their time by the second mother.

The experiment showed the evolutionary nature of attachment babies have towards their mother.

Bowlby found out that human babies tend to show two types of behavior as they start developing “clear-cut attachment”. One of them has security base; whenever babies are scared or stressed they run to their mother. The other one is “separation anxiety”. I have often noticed babies showing this separation anxiety when they are separated from their mothers; they feel distressed, they start to cry.