The primal importance of a child''s bond to its mother has always been
recognised, and is a topic that has fascinated
people for thousands of
years. Playwrights from Sophocles to the modern day have explored this,
and in more recent times psychologists have devoted much research and
conjecture to understanding it. Among psychologists, there is much
debate about exactly how important this attachment is, and why.
At the turn of the century, the treatment of new-born babies was
regarded as having little significance for later life, as babies were
thought to be immune to influence. This idea, like many others
prevalent at that time, was attacked by Sigmund Freud. He believed (see
Freud, 1933 for a synopsis, but this theory was put forward
considerably earlier) that the relationship a child has with its mother
is a prototype on which all future relationships are based.
Freud''s theory held that the child becomes attached to its mother
because she is its source of food, hence she gratifies its most basic
needs. Slightly later in childhood, the drive for food is supplemented
by another basic drive - the need for sexual pleasure. According to
Freud''s theory, the mother, who is already an object of love because of
her role in satisfying the first need, becomes an object of desire with
whom the child wants to gratify its sexual desire (this is with
reference to boys - an equivalent mechanism was proposed for girls, but
much criticised, and Freud eventually admitted to not understanding
female sexuality). In the normal course of growing up, the child comes
to accept that this can not be, and sets out to become an adult, and
find another figure with whom to satisfy this need. It follows that if
future relationships are a substitute for the mother-child bond, then
they will also be modelled on it.
Many people have questioned this cynical view of infants, including
John Bowlby (1969, 1973). He disregarded what he called Freud''s
"cupboard love" theory of attachment, believing instead that a child is
born biologically pre-disposed to become attached to its mother for two
important reasons. These are the need for comfort, and the fear of the
unknown, both of which are characteristics that can be observed in all
children. Thus the bond with the mother is formed for less crass
reasons than simply that she is the provider of sustenance.
Bowlby''s conjecture has been supported experimentally by Harlow
(1958). He studied rhesus monkeys, one of the primate species most
closely related to humans. In his study, new-born monkeys were raised
without their mothers, instead of which they were provided with two
''mother substitutes''. One was a wire ''mother'' equipped with a nipple
that provided food, whereas the other was a ''mother doll'' made of
terry-cloth. While the monkeys soon learned which was the source of
food, and went to the "wire mother" to feed, they became attached to
the "cloth mother," which was their source of comfort when frightened.
This shows that infants need their mother for something other than
food, and this comfort can only be provided by an appropriate figure -
the cloth mother is a better substitute because it more closely
resembles the monkeys'' real mothers.
Though he disputed Freud’s explanation of the child’s love for its
mother, Bowlby agreed that the attachment a child forms to its mother
is crucially important for the rest of its life. That a primary
attachment is important is generally accepted, but the contention that
it must necessarily be with the child’s mother has also been debated.
In the late 20th Century, more and more mothers are having to work
while their children are still very young, and yet this social change
does not seem to be creating a mentally unhealthy generation.
Clarke-Stewart (1989) studied children who had "had extensive
non-maternal care" during the first year of their lives, and did not
find eharmed them. These children had formed
attachments, but not necessarily to their mothers, and this arrangement
seems to be adequate.
Having seen that the formation of a primary attachment is
important, the next issue is how this attachment is formed. One
approach is that babies are born Ôprogrammed’ to form an attachment to
something, which under normal circumstances is the mother. An
equivalent process in animals was studied by Konrad Lorenz (reported in
Hess, 1959).