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Parenting styles and their effect on children
Importance of attachment in child development
Parental Models of Attachment
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Attachment could be define as a feeling of strong affinity between 2 people and mutual need for affection. Attachment happen between parents and the baby before the baby is born. In a normal relationship, parents wait for their baby whilst the mother is expecting, sometimes talk to the baby in the womb, the fetus can perceive the love, hear voices, get attached to his mum and dad before meeting them like parents get attached to the baby they might talk to, cuddle whilst cuddling the tummy, enjoy seeing baby kick towards the end of the pregnancy. A mother will feel her baby move, sometimes sit in uncomfortable positions, the mother and child are already bonding. The mother can interpret certain activities the baby might have in her belly by …show more content…
The love and care a mother gives to her child in his first moments of life is reassuring, comforting, soothing, providing the relationship and attachment between the mother and the child is reliable, affectionate, fusional. It is sadly not always the case. In some cases, the mother was not ready to have a child and rejects her child since before the child was even born. Once the child is born, some mothers learn to love their babies naturally. Some don't. Some don't feel they can bond with their child. These are more likely to suffer post natal depression and keep an adverse feeling towards their child. Sometimes it happens because the relationship with the child's father was not working, perhaps abusive, not socially acceptable, the consequence of a rape... The poor child being born from a mother who was not ready psychologically to accept her child have detrimental painful imprint and consequences on a child's emotional and social development for the rest of his/her life. If a child feels rejected from his/her main care giver, he/she can feel problems attaching to other people, building self-confidence, achieving, make friends, socialise, the child might become antisocial or self-destructive as a result of mother deprivation or attachment issue to the mother …show more content…
The child can be taken to a special unit where he/she might not be able to bond with mother, in the same way, a child who is always with his/her mum would. Both the mother and child could suffer from this situation. The mother might keep the negative imprint of the traumatic moment her child was taken away, remember this pain all her life whilst reflecting on issues her child will face. This painful imprinted memory might be one she will later reflect on her child. Being born prematurely has consequences on children's physical and emotional development throughout the life of a child. Every time a mother will see a potential link between the child being premature and issues child is now facing, the mother will remember all these pains and reflect them on the child who might become twice more affected. An unhealthy attachment to the mother or primary care giver from birth can lead to severe consequences on a child's mental health and healthy development. A child rejected by his mother will always crave and seek the love attention he/she did not get. But because the child knows nothing but rejection, he/she rejects those he/she would want to get attached
...s one with the knowledge necessary to incorporate methods for evoking change and empathize. It becomes easier to understand how certain maladaptive behaviors are developed as certain characteristics are learned patterns and not solely based on one’s personality. There are very many areas of attachment that need to be studied. As the population of minorities, working mothers, single parent homes, and children in the foster care system rise the ability to assess their ability to attach as well as develop new attachments is crucial. The works by Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Main have provided me with new interest in the attachment styles of children to their caregivers. It has allowed me to adjust the way in which I interact with my own daughter and other children in my presence to help establish new and beneficial adult attachments so that they can grow and feel empowered.
takes her breath away. It seemed that in giving life to her child she had
and cannot have is a child of her own. When she hears of the mother’s
The mother-infant bond is the familiarity and attachment a mother forms with her offspring. These helpless babies are reliant on their mother’s nurture for survival. This dependence reaches farther than a physiological need. Infants rely on their mothers for a wide variety of demands. The mother-infant bond is critical to maximizing the fitness of each individual, as well as the growth of the species.
When this tale is looked at from a deeper perspective, it is learned that the mothers wish is to be loved and not have to worry about her child that has come in the way of her and her
Fromm describes the value of secure attachment, explaining that to a baby, “mother is warmth, mother is food, mother is euphoric state of satisfaction and security” (Fromm, 38). As they grow, children learn how to love and be loved through this relationship. The experience of being loved as a baby is described as a “passive one” because “there is nothing I [the baby] has to do in order to be loved” (Fromm, 39). Love, as a child may have learned about it, can only be received and “cannot be acquired, produced, controlled”, but the “capacity to love” can be developed; this is usually displayed in children starting at age eight (Fromm, 40). In a healthy learning journey, children come to learn that “love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love” (Fromm, 46). Children will seriously struggle - especially in regards to their ability to love and be loved - if they are deprived a comforting, present caretaker in their early years of
Let us take a look at the most important factor that determines the health of our adult relationships; that is infant attachment. From the time that an infant is born, those around him influence the way a child will act or react in any given relationship. It provides a firm foundation upon which all other relationships grow. The idea is that the success of all relationships is dependent upon the success of the first one, namely, of the bond between the infant and his mother or primary caregiver (Brodie, 2008).
This idea is supported by Schaffer and Emerson (1964) who studied the main reason for attachment, through interviews and observations. They performed a longitudinal study of 60 babies at intervals of 1 month for 18 months where they observed the infants in their own home. They found over half the infants had a primary attachment with their mother by 18 months because the mothers responded to the infant’s needs best which promotes
The attachment style that a child endures with their mother initially begins before the child is even born. In the mother’s womb, the infant becomes aware of their mother and father’s voices, where they begin to develop a bond with them and feel nurtured and comforted by the things they hear their parents sing and speak to them. According to Bowlby, the development of attachment takes place in four different phases and are reinforced as they grow older from the Preattachment (birth to age 6 weeks), attachment-in-the-making (age 6 weeks to 8 months), clear cut attachment (between 8 months to 1 ½ years of age) and the reciprocal relationship (from 1 ½ or 2 and on). As the child grows older, then begin to understand their parent’s feelings and motives and are able to organize their efforts and reciprocate the same i...
“The results of this study showed women who were looking forward to becoming mothers had children who were healthier on a physical as well as an emotional level than the children of mothers who were not looking forward to the experience. While the prenate does not have an understanding of feelings such as an adult does, the unborn child is able to sense even slight differences in emotions. (Ibid, pg. 18) Sensing and reacting to feelings of doubt and uncertainty as well as stronger emotions such as hate and love is possible and quite probable.”
Attachment theory is the idea that a child needs to form a close relationship with at least one primary caregiver. The theory proved that attachment is necessary to ensure successful social and emotional development in an infant. It is critical for this to occur in the child’s early infant years. However, failed to prove that this nurturing can only be given by a mother (Birns, 1999, p. 13). Many aspects of this theory grew out of psychoanalyst, John Bowlby’s research. There are several other factors that needed to be taken into account before the social worker reached a conclusion; such as issues surrounding poverty, social class and temperament. These factors, as well as an explanation of insecure attachment will be further explored in this paper.
The daughter may in turn give in to her mother's insatiable sense of control and feel devalued and worthless.
Many families are expected to accept and process the information that they are given the same way as the professional that is working with them. It is important to take the family’s feelings and emotions into context when presenting them with the limitations that their child will experience in their life. A professional’s perspective can come off as judgmental and this can result in a lack of interest in the hopes that parents have for their children. The difference between parents and professionals when working together is that professionals see the diagnosis as a stepping stone for the work that will be needed for the child. Some parents have multiple children, jobs, and other responsibilities that can hinder them from spending long hours doing activities that therapists and other professionals suggest to them (Fialka, 2000).
Infancy involves rapid growth of the brain. This is a time when learning occurs through environmental cues, crying, and most importantly, the mother or other primary caregiver. This early learning or attachment between infants and their mothers or primary caregivers has a significant impact on the infant’s development. A primary caregiver’s ability to connect with an infant has significant developmental outcomes that have an impact on cognition and learning (Snyder, Shapiro, & Treleaven, 2012).
By choosing to lover her child, the mother acknowledges that she doesn’t feel as if she is obligated to do so because she wants to love him or her and is prepared for the challenges that await her. Thoma Oord writes in his article “The Love Racket: Defining Love and Agape for the Love–and–Science Research Program” that the definition of love refers to the “promotion of well being of all others in an enduring, intense, effective, and pure manner” meaning that when a person loves someone, they will try to do whatever they can to their beloved’s benefit (922). The child is benefited in many ways when the mother chooses to love him or her, for example, the child’s anxiety levels and sense of fear are lowered because they have the security of the bond they possess with their mother (Tarlaci 745). In his article, “Unmasking the Neurology of Love,” Robert Weiss explains that love is a “goal-orientated motivation state rather than a specific emotion” which arises the possibility of a mother “falling out of love” with her child if neither feelings or goals are present. Tarlaci observed an experiment conducted by A. Bartels and S. Zeki in which they compared the brain activity of both a mother looking at a picture of her child to a lover looking at a picture of their beloved. In the experiment it was discovered that “just about the same regions of the brain showed activity in the same two groups except for one” the PACG, which has been confirmed to be “specific to a mother’s love” (Tarlaci 747). So the chances of a mother falling out of love with her child are there, but are different from that of a lover due to the areas of the brain involved. Therefore, explaining the bond between a mother and child as something that forms when a mother chooses to love him or her implies a greater sense of willingness and