Attachment by John Bowlby

Author:John Bowlby [JOHN BOWLBY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Roles of Infant and of Mother in the Relationship

From what has been said it is clear that during the earliest months of infancy mothers of all these species of non-human primate play a large part in ensuring that their infants remain close to them. If the infant is unable to grip efficiently the mother gives it support. If it strays too far she pulls it back. When a hawk flies overhead or a human approaches too closely she hugs it to her. Thus even if the infant were disposed to go far it is never allowed to do so.

But all the evidence is that the infant is not disposed to stray far. This is shown whenever an infant is brought up away from its mother, as infants of many different species of monkey and ape have been. In several cases in which an infant has been raised in a human home a biographical account is available. Good examples are those by Rowell (1965) of a young baboon, by Bolwig (1963) of a young patas monkey (also a terrestrial species, and with a maturation rate similar to that of a baboon), by Kellogg and Kellogg (1933) and by Hayes (1951) of young chimpanzees, and by Martini (1955) of a young gorilla. Of the cases in which an infant has been brought up on an experimental dummy the best-known reports are those of Harlow and his colleagues (Harlow, 1961; Harlow and Harlow, 1965).

All those brave scientists who have acted as a foster-parent to a young primate testify to the intensity and persistence with which it clings. Rowell writes of the little baboon she looked after (from the fifth to the eleventh week of age): ‘when alarmed by a loud noise or a sudden movement he ran to me and clung desperately hard to my leg’. After she had had the infant ten days: ‘he no longer allowed me out of his sight, and refused to accept dummy or apron, but clung the more fiercely’. Of the little patas monkey that Bolwig cared for from a few days old he writes that from the first ‘he firmly gripped any object placed in his hand and protested by screaming if it was removed’ and that ‘his attachment quickly grew closer and closer until in the end it became almost unbreakable’. Hayes, describing Viki, the female chimpanzee she reared from three days of age, reports how, at four months old when Viki was walking well, ‘from the moment she left her crib until she was tucked up at night, with time out for only an hour’s nap, she clung to me like a papoose’. All the accounts contain similar passages.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.