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it should take place during the first
year, or at the very least before the
child is two years old. Bowlby
thought that any attempts at
mothering beyond the age of three
would be useless, and the child
would be on course to suffer the
effects of maternal deprivation.Maternal deprivation
In 1950, Bowlby was commissioned
by the World Health Organization
to study children who had suffered
maternal deprivation during World
War II due to evacuation or being
made homeless. He was also asked
to investigate the effects of being
raised in residential nurseries and
other large institutions (such as
orphanages). The result of this early
work was Bowlby’s 1951 report,
Maternal Care and Mental Health,
in which he observed that children
deprived of maternal care for
prolonged periods of time during
early childhood suffered some
degree of intellectual, social, or
emotional retardation later in life.
Five years later Bowlby began a
second study, this time investigating
children who had spent five months
to two years in a tuberculosis ❯❯DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
See also: Konrad Lorenz 77 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99 ■ Melanie Klein 108–109 ■ Anna Freud 111 ■ Kurt Lewin 218–23 ■
Lev Vygotsky 270 ■ Bruno Bettelheim 271 ■ Harry Harlow 278 ■ Mary Ainsworth 280–81 ■ Michael Rutter 339
Infants and mothers are
biologically programed
to form an attachment with
each other......within the critical period
of the child’s life
(the first 24 months).If this attachment is broken
within the critical period
it will cause serious and
permanent damage to
the child’s development.Attachment
behavior is an
integral part of
human nature.programed to form an attachment
with their mothers in order to ensure
their survival. Mothers, he believed,
are also genetically programmed to
bond with their babies, feeling the
need to keep them in close proximity.
Any conditions that threaten to
separate mother and child activate
instinctive attachment behaviors
and feelings of insecurity and fear.
These ideas formed the basis of
Bowlby’s theory, which developed
to explain the lifelong significance
of the mother–infant bond as well
as the psychological difficulties
that children suffer if this bond is
damaged or entirely broken.
Mothers only
One of the most controversial
aspects of Bowlby’s theory is that
infants always attach to a female,
never a male. This female figure
may not be the natural mother, but
she certainly represents a mother-
figure. The term he gave for this
tendency to attach to a female is
“monotropy,” and he emphasized
that, although an infant may have
more than one attachment figure,
his attachment to a mother-figure
is simply different from and more
significant than any other
attachment he will form throughout
his life. Both the infant and his
mother behave in ways that secure
this attachment. An infant, for
instance, engages in sucking,
cuddling, looking, smiling, and
crying in order to shape and control
his caregiver’s behavior, and a
caregiver would be sensitive and
responsive to the infant’s needs.
In this way the two behavioral
systems—attachment and
caregiving—help to shape one
another and create a lifelong bond.
Bowlby believes that this bond is
so deeply formative that if it fails to
take place, or breaks down within
the first few years of life, the child
will go on to suffer serious negative
consequences in later life. He also
argues that there is a critical period
during which a mother and infant
should develop a secure attachment:Mother love in infancy is as
important for mental health
as are vitamins and proteins
for physical health.
John Bowlby