Unit 7

Attachment, Development of Self, and the Family

• Week eight covers attachment, self-development, and family dynamics.

Outline

• Topics that are covered are: The caregiver-child attachment relationship, the self, family structure, family dynamics, child maltreatment, and family socioeconomic context.

Attachment Relationship

• Attachment is an emotional bond enduring across space and time with a special person.
• Attachment is usually discussed regarding infants and specific caregivers.
• Attachment relationships can also occur in adulthood.

Behaviourism and Attachment

• Behaviourism proposes the infant-mother bond is classically conditioned
• Nourishment to the child provided by the mother establishes the bond.
• Harry Harlow showed that rhesus monkeys raised without mothers displayed later problems.
• Attachment/bond with mother/caregiver develops due to the sense of security they provide.
• Security with a caregiver is considered a "base of operations".

Wire and Cloth Mom Experiment

• Experimentation was conducted to determine if monkeys value the pleasure of food or comfort more.
• Two surrogate mothers were used: A wire/wood uncovered mother, and a wire/wood mother covered in terrycloth.
• Researchers varied which of the two "mothers" provided milk
• Time spent with mothers was measured, showing that the monkeys preferred the cloth mother, even without food.

Attachment Theory (Bowlby)

• Attachment theory states children are biologically predisposed to develop attachments to caregivers.
• Developing attachments to caregivers, increases chances of survival.
• Bowlby describes humans as predisposed to seek closeness with their attachment figures.
• A secure base involves the presence of a trusted caregiver giving the infant/toddler a sense of security.
• A secure base allows children to explore the surrounding environment.
• Co-regulation and imprinting are also elements of attachment.

Internal Working Model of Attachment

• The internal working model of attachment is constructed through experiences with caregivers.
• A child's mental representation includes, self, attachment figures, and relationships in general.
• Children's attachment figures are either accessible and responsive or unavailable and unresponsive.

Measurement of Attachment Security (Ainsworth)

• Attachment measurements involve observing children's behaviour with caregivers.
• Measurements can also involve interviewing parents/caregivers about behaviours and quality of relationship.
• The Strange Situation was developed by Mary Ainsworth to assess infants' attachment to their primary caregiver.
• Key factors include the extent of infant's use of caregiver as a secure base and the infant's reaction to separations from and reunions with caregiver.

Ainsworth's Attachment Categories

• Ainsworth and colleagues identified three main attachment patterns: secure, insecure/avoidant, and insecure/resistant.
• These patterns were identified using the Strange Situation and can be replicated with mothers and fathers.
• Subsequent extensions include disorganized/disoriented categories, where there is a higher percentage of maltreated infants whose parents have poor attachment models.

Evaluating the Strange Situation

• A positive aspect is that there is similarity in infant behaviour in the Strange Situation at lab setting and home
• It continues to be standard measurement of attachment
• Requires substantial resources and lab setting to perform the procedure
• Societal change in out-of-home care, implies that the Strange Situation may no longer be "strange"

Parental Sensitivity

• Parental sensitivity involves caregiving behavior expressing warmth and contingent responsiveness.
• It can be exhibited in a variety of ways.
• Mothers of securely attached infants respond warmly to their children and are sensitive to their needs.
• Sensitive and responsive parenting differs by cultural group.
• Mothers of infant-resistant infants are inconsistent, anxious, overwhelmed, indifferent, emotionally unavailable, and reject physical closeness attempts
• Mothers of disorganized/disoriented infants sometimes exhibit abusive, frightening, or disoriented behaviour and may be dealing with unresolved loss or trauma

Cultural Variations

• Infants' behaviours in the Strange Situation were found to be similar across cultures like Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
• Similarity of attachment behaviour across cultures, supports the notion that attachment security is a universal phenomenon.
• Differences include, that children in Colombia and Peru are least likely to remain in close physical proximity to their mothers.
• Children in Italy and Portugal are more likely to maintain physical contact with their mothers.

Attachment and Socioemotional Development

• Children's attachment status in infancy and childhood strongly predicts their socioemotional development.
• Securely attached children are more likely to develop positive and constructive internal working models of attachment.
• They express emotions appropriately, develop healthier peer relationships, exhibit enhanced self-regulation, sociability, lower anxiety, depression, aggression, and delinquency.

The Self

• The self involves a description of one's physical characteristics, personality traits, personal preferences, familial relationships, ethnicity, culture, and national origin
• The three main aspects of self are self-concept, self-esteem, and identity.

Self-Concept

• Self-concept is a conceptual system of ones thoughts and attitudes about oneself, includes physical being, social and internal characteristics
• Development of the self is important.
• Individuals' self-conceptions influence child's overall feelings of well-being and self-confidence when faced with external criticism.

Self-Concept in Infancy

• Infants have a rudimentary concept of self.
• Around 8 months: Self-concept becomes distinct and linked to attachment.
• At 12 motnhs babies engage in joint attention to objects
• At 15 months babies can distinguish self and others by gender and age
• At 18-20 months, self-recognition appears via the "rouge test", which is characterized by cultural differences
• At 24 months, self-recognition occurs in photographs; embarrassment and shame; self-assertion develop
• At 3 years, language is used for memory storage and narrative construction of life story

Self-Concept in Childhood

• As children progress, their self-concept becomes increasingly complex.
• The sense of self is based on direct and indirect evaluations of others.
• Social comparison is evaluating oneself to others on psychological, behavioural, or physical attributes
• The start of social evaluation is evident in elementary school children

Middle Childhood: Sense of Self

• In middle childhood, comparing their attributes and behavior with those of their peers start to refine the sense of self.
• This social comparison process involves physical abilities, academic achievement and material well-being.

Egocentric Tendencies in Adolescence

• Egocentric tendencies in adolescence are manifest as personal fables and preoccupation with imaginary audiences.
• The middle teens often identify contradictions in themselves, feel conflicted about inconsistencies, and lack cognitive skills to integrate their recognition of these contradictions.

Self-Concept in Adolescence

• Self-concept changes fundamentally across adolescence due to the increase in abstract thinking.
• The perceived self has abstract characteristics, is influenced by abstract thinking emergence, while conflicting due to self inconsistencies and coherent self-concept.
• Personal fable occurs due to adolescent egocentrism which creates uniqueness in ones feelings and thoughts
• Imaginary audiences stem from adolescent egocentrism, where everyone else is focused on adolescent's appearance and behaviour

Self-Esteem

• Individuals with high self-esteem feel good about themselves, are hopeful, and can face costs without based on positive self-attributes

• Individuals with low self-esteem feel worthless, helpless, and may turn to aggression, depression, substance abuse, social withdrawal, or suicidal ideation.

Sources of Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem varies in age by developmental stage.
• Physical attractiveness is linked to high self-esteem, positive perceptions, and better treatment.
• Boys usually have higher self-esteem across lifespan; there are specific/domain differences.
• Transgender/nonbinary children's self-esteem is affected by amount of parental support and access to gender-affirming medical care.
• Peer acceptance increasingly affects self-esteem over childhood.
• Transitions in life stages are linked to self-esteem decline because lack of attention, support, and friendship in the new environment with low-income neighborhoods is associated with lower self-esteem in adolescents

Culture and Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem can vary accross cultures; in Western cultures, it is be related to individual accomplishments and self-promotion.
• In Asian cultures, self-esteem is defined more by contributing to the welfare of the larger group.
• It may be harmful to praise too much, especially with children with low self-esteem leading children to search for external validation

Identity

• Identity can be externally imposed, or through membership in a group and develops during adolescence.
• Erikson's earliest theorists described how all adolescents experience identity crisis and must separate from parents.
• Marcia suggests that identity development is related to where adolescent falls on exploration/commitment.

Marcia's (1980) Four Groups of Identity Status

• Identity Achievement: The individual has explored potential identities and has committed to one.
• Identity Foreclosure: The individual has not explored potential identities, choosing or commiting based on the choices or values of others.
• Moratorium: The individual is exploring various identities, but has not committed to any specific identity.

Progression to identity Achievement

• Diffusion to foreclosure to achievement is a common path.
• Diffusion to moratorium to foreclosure to achievement is another typical path.
• Identity status in Western society is related to adjustment, social behaviour, and personality.
• Factors that can influence identity are familial, individual, socioeconomic, historical, and cultural.

Ethnic and Racial Identity

• Ethnic and racial identity encompasses beliefs and attitudes, regarding the ethnic/racial groups that they belong to (race and ethnicity)
• Increased levels of ethnic/racial identity are usually coupled with high self-esteem, well-being, and low levels of emotional/behavioural problems.

Understanding Ethnic and Racial Identity

• Children that lack ethnicity and race, are unaware that ethnicity and race are lasting features of the self.
• The early school years provide knowledge of common group characteristics; feelings about group membership; self-identification; and group-related preference development across contexts.
• During adolescence, ethnic/racial identity becomes more central.
• Acculturation and parent-youth acculturation gaps as is bicultural identity.
• Family discussions about race, Acceptance, and discrimination also play a role.

Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation

• Individual identity involves components of sexual identity.
• Sexual identity is ones sense of ones self as a sexual being.
• Sexual orientation includes an individuals romantic/erotic attractions to people of the opposite gender, same gender, both, or neither
• The majority of adolescents are heterosexual and attracted to members of a different biological sex

Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Stats

• In Canada, 79.3% of high school students reported a heterosexual identity.
• 5.9% reported a bisexual identity, while 1% reported a gay or lesbian identity, and 3.8% are were questioning their own.
• Discrimination due to sexual orientation, is prevalent in practice and law.
• Common issues for members include, harrasment, violence, and hate crimes

Sexual-minority youth

• This includes adolescents attracted to people from same or different biological sexes/genders, collectively called lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth or LGBTTQIA+
• These children may show some cross gender behaviour

Family Structure

• Defining family from the perspective of the child, involves is a group of individuals one adult who is related to the child by birth, marriage, adoption, or foster status.
• They are responsible for basic necessities as well as love, support, safety, stability, and opportunities for learning.
• Numbers of and relationships among people living in a household, influence interactions as well as family routines/norms, and children's well-being.

Changes in Family Structures

• Family structures have changed dramatically in the past 60 years where there is an increase in grandparents offering primairy care
• Families are smaller, and family structres are more fluid, also seen in Canada

Family Structure in Canada

• Single and unwed parents are a trend that has increased over time
• 63% of Canadian children lived with married parents in 2021; while 28% live with single parents.
• Because of more single parents, there is less time to spend with children
• First-time parents are older than in the past.
• There has been a recent decrease in teen preganancy but that still leads to negative concequences in adolescent parents and their children

Family Dynamics

• This refers to the way family members interact in relationships (mother/child, father/child, mother/father, siblings)
• Complex, interdependent and reciprocal influences are characteristic of this dynamic

Parenting

• Socialization is a way children acquire standards, values, skills, knowledge, and behaviours, to guide future roles in culture
• Parenting uses a set a methods to impose discipline and involves a general parenting style
• Parents use discipline to create a set of strategies and behaviours in children to teach behaviours
• Internalization is meant to create a permanent change, where there can be effective discpline when child learns behaviour
• A punishment is a negative stimulus to alter behaviour

Parenting Styles

• Parenting styles involves warm and responsiveness with certain levels of control and demandingness based on the circumstance
• Four parenting styles: Authoritarian, Authoritative, Uninvolved, and Permissive.

Applications of Spanking

• Spanking is characterized as, striking a child on the bottom with an open hand or object to deter bad behavior
• Despite the negative and abusive actions some parents have resorted to the measure to alter behaviour

Mother Father roles

• Mothers will focus on domestic roles.
• Fathers prefer playful interaction and are supposed to provide financial support.
• Factors like levels of involvment, child-rearing stratergies and cultures can influence the behaviour of the children
• The children can influence the parenting behaviour through noncompliance/externalizing problems/coercive cycles

Sibling Relationships

• Siblings can influence each other where the interactions help develop social skills, sharing, reciprocity
• Rivalry and conflict can also be observed
• Parent relationshihps, and the nature of familial relations can affect affects the behaviour of some families

Child Maltreatment

• Abuse is an action or failure to act on caregiver part that results or puts, child at risk of physical/emotional harm
• In 2021, 221 canandian children where victims and 12% involved multiple incidents where the most often perpetrator are one or both the parents
• Types of abuse include neglect, physical, emotional, sexual. There are several risks and concequences like parental lach of awareness, alchol abuse, social isolation but for some there can also be positive outcomes

Family Socioeconomic Context

Childcare Context

• in 2022, 31% chideln whose mothers work, recievr center based childcare whereas another 14% recieve home evnirnemnt childcare
• This contrast from high incole parents whose children are cared for in organized childecare or pre schools, lower income families relay more of the family members
• Studies on adjusting find no diferrence in preoblems
• High Qulaity is nessary to foster language, cogntive developeent in children particulay from lower income house holds
• Provinces regulate standards by caregiver ratio, gropu sizes where, formal training is nessecary