User:Andrealisahoch/sandbox

Attachment theory is about the love that grows between a baby and the people who take care of the baby. It is also about how that love changes the way the baby acts as it grows bigger and meets new people. Attachment theory is even about how teen-agers and adults may treat each other.

Most of the time, the people who take care of a baby are the baby's mother and father. If the mother or the father comes when the baby cries and treats the baby with tenderness, the baby learns that the parents will take care of it. If the mother or the father smile at the baby, talk to the baby, sing to the baby, and hold the baby even when it is not crying, the baby learns that the parents love it. When a baby has learned that it is loved and that it will be taken care of if it cries, it usually grows up to be a person who expects other people to be nice. When a child feels loved and cared for and thinks other people will be nice, that child is said to be securely attached.

Two people were important in thinking about and writing about attachment theory, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.

Bowlby wrote that the care and love a baby gets from its parents cause it to form an important idea.[1] He called this idea the internal working model. The internal working model is how the baby or child thinks about itself, its parents, and other people. When parents have taken loving care of a baby and child, it grows up with a positive internal working model. This child will think that it is lovable, because it was loved. It will think that the parents are good, because they were caring. And the child will not be afraid to try to make friends with new people, because it will expect people to be nice. Children who have a positive internal working model are also likely to be kind to other people. Bowlby believed that a positive internal working model would help people make friends.

Bowlby wrote that the attachment process in people was like the closeness that exists between mother and baby gorillas, chimpanzees and monkeys. In people, Bowlby believed that attachment developed gradually, in four steps.

[|Mary Ainsworth] saw how mothers treated their babies in different cities and countries. She saw that many ways mothers and babies acted were the same, even when families lives were very different. Ainsworth made a way to test how the attachment relationship between a mother and her young child. She called it "The Strange Situation."

Contribution to the Attachment Theory, Harry Harlow:
Harry Harlow was a psychologist who studied the behavior of infant monkeys who were separated from their mothers soon after they were born. He observed the behavior of some baby monkeys who were either raised in isolation or with dummy mothers made of either wires others made of soft terry toweling cloth. Mothers had a feeding bottle attached to it.

After experimenting with different infant monkeys, monkeys who were raised in isolation either died or behaved abnormally when they got older.

In one experiment, monkeys present in front of both wired and terry-clothed mothers would go to the both mothers for nourishment. Once fed, they would spend the rest of the time with the terry-clothed mothers. In other experiments, if an object in their cage frightened the monkey, the monkey would run to the terry-clothed mother for protection. The terry-clothed mother was used as a safe base. The infant monkey would feel safer and confident when around the terry-clothed monkey. Harlow concluded that a monkey needs an object to be attached to or hold onto during his or hers’ critical period. This means when the monkey is stressed or scared, he or she needs someone to hold onto to feel safe. Harlow’s research has been criticized widely for its unethical uses, but it led to much greater discovery of mother and child bondings. It led to findings about mother and child bonding. A child needs more than just his or her basic needs. They need a warmth, care, love, acceptance and affection in order to grow into normal adults.