Contents
When parents have their first child, they are often surprised that their firstborn has a special character from the very beginning; when their second child is born, they are surprised at how different it is from the first. These parenting observations are correct. Already from the first weeks of life, infants show individual characteristics in the degree of activity, sensitivity to environmental changes and excitability. One child cries a lot, the other very little. One endures swaddling and bathing without much concern, the other kicks and breaks out of his hands. One reacts to every sound, the other does not notice anything but the loudest sounds. Babies differ even in relation to hugs. Some people like to be hugged tightly and pressed tightly against the person who picks them up; others hold tight, huddle, and make fewer adaptive movements (Korner, 1973).
Temperament
Currently, temperament is studied very intensively, although there is disagreement about how to define, recognize and measure it. In addition, it is still unclear to what extent the child’s temperament serves as a building material for the subsequent formation of the individual’s personality (Kohnstamm, Bates & Rothbart, 1989).
The fact that differences in temperament in children are already observed at a very early age casts doubt on the traditional view that the behavior of a newborn is entirely shaped by his early environment. For example, parents of a restless child tend to blame each other for difficulties with the baby. But it is becoming increasingly clear from research on newborns that many temperamental traits are innate and that the parent-child bond is reciprocal—in other words, the child’s behavior also shapes the parent’s response. A child who quickly calms down, cuddles affectionately, and stops crying when picked up increases the parent’s sense of competence and affection. And a child who holds on tight and continues to cry despite attempts to soothe him creates feelings of ineptitude and rejection in the parents. The better the child responds to parental stimulation (snuggles gently and quiets when held, listens vividly when spoken to or played with), the more easily bonds of love develop between parent and child.
The first temperament study, which followed a group of 140 infants from middle- and higher-class families for a long time, was started in the USA in the 50s. The initial data were collected in interviews with parents and later supplemented by interviews with teachers and the results of direct testing of children. Infants were assessed on 9 characteristics, which were then combined to determine three more general types of temperament:
a) babies who liked to play, ate and slept regularly and easily adapted to new situations were classified as easy (about 40% of the entire sample);
b) excitable, with irregular eating and sleeping, reacting sharply and negatively to new situations, were classified as difficult (about 10% of the sample);
c) infants with a low level of activity, softly avoiding new situations and adapting to them longer than «light» ones, made up the slow warm-up group (about 15% of the sample).
In the remaining 35% of infants, the scores were neither low nor high for any of the parameters determined (Thomas et al., 1963). The 133 subjects from the original sample are now adults and again subjected to assessments of temperament and psychological adjustment.
The results regarding the preservation of temperament were mixed. On the one hand, during the first 5 years of life of these children, a significant correlation was observed between the indicators of their temperament; children with «difficult» temperament subsequently had more problems at school; and temperament and adaptability measured in adulthood had a significant correlation with temperament measurements obtained at ages 3,4, 5, and 0,3 years. On the other hand, all these levels of correlation were low (on the order of 9), and most of the 1986 traits taken separately showed little or no retention over time (Thomas & Chess, 1977, 1984; Chess & Thomas , XNUMX).
The authors of this study emphasize that the preservation or changeability of temperament is determined by the interaction between the child’s genotype (inherited properties) and the environment. In particular, they believe that the key to healthy development is that the home environment is well suited to the child’s temperament. If the parents of a difficult child manage to create a happy, stable life in the home, the negative, «difficult» aspects of the child’s behavior are smoothed out with age (Belsky, Fish & Isabella, 1991). Thomas and Chese tell the story of Carl, a boy who, during the first 5 years of his life, had one of the most difficult temperaments. Because Carl’s father was pleased with his son’s «passionate» temperament and allowed him to initially react negatively to new situations, Carl thrived and became more and more «easy». At 23, he was already definitely assigned to the group of «light» temperament. However, each time the life situation changed, Carl’s original temperament showed up for a short time. For example, when he began learning to play the piano in late childhood, he again had strong negative reactions, followed by a slow process of adaptation, and eventually a positive attitude — a lively passion. He had a similar pattern when he entered college (Thomas & Chess, 1986).
In the course of a recent study, further confirmation of the constancy of temperament was obtained. It involved 79 children who, at the age of 21 months, were diagnosed as either severely inhibited or non-inhibited. At 13 years of age, those who were diagnosed as inhibited at 21 months of age scored significantly lower on tests for externalization, deviant behavior, and aggressive behavior (Schwartz, Snidman & Kagan, 1996). Other studies have shown that the tendency to be interested in or avoid unfamiliar events, which is an aspect of temperament, remains fairly stable over time (Kagan & Snidman, 1991).
By the age of two months, a normal baby smiles when he sees the face of his mother or father. Delighted by such a reaction, parents encourage her in every possible way, trying to achieve a repetition. In fact, the infant’s ability to smile at such an early age may have evolved historically precisely because it strengthened parental affection. Parents treat these smiles as a sign that the child recognizes and loves them, they are imbued with even more tenderness and stimulate the child’s reactions. This establishes and maintains a mutually reinforcing system of social interaction.
All over the world, children start smiling around the same age, whether they grow up in a remote African village or in the home of the average American. This suggests that the timing of the appearance of smiles is more determined by maturation than by the conditions under which the child is raised. Blind children begin to smile around the same age as sighted children (in response to their parents’ voices or touch, not their faces), suggesting that smiling is an innate response (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970).
By 3-4 months of age, babies begin to recognize familiar family members and express preference for them: they smile more and babble more when they see them or hear their voices, but they are still quite receptive to strangers. However, at the age of 7-8 months, this indistinguishability changes. Many children become wary or genuinely frightened when approached by a stranger (even when held by their parents), and at the same time they protest strongly when they are left in an unfamiliar environment or with a stranger. It is often disconcerting for parents that their previously very sociable infant, happily taken care of by a nanny, now cries inconsolably when they are about to leave, and continues to cry for some time after that.
Although a restless reaction to a stranger does not occur in all infants (apparently it is a hallmark of temperament), the number of infants in whom it is noted increases sharply between the ages of about 8 months and one year. Similarly, separation distress—an independent but closely related phenomenon, also associated with inborn temperament—peaks between 14 and 18 months and then gradually subsides. By the age of three, most children feel quite confident in the absence of their parents, freely communicating with other children and adults.
The appearance and disappearance of these two types of fear are apparently very weakly influenced by the conditions of education. The same general pattern was observed in American children who were brought up entirely at home, and among those children who were sent to a day care center. As shown in fig. 3.8, although the proportion of children who cry when the mother leaves the room varies across cultures, the age patterns of onset and decline are quite similar (Kagan, Kearsley & Zelazo, 1978).
How to explain such a temporal dynamics of the appearance and disappearance of such fears in children who were typical of this? Apparently, two factors play an important role in the appearance and disappearance of fears. The first is the growing amount of memory. During the second half of the first year of life, infants experience significant development in their ability to remember past events and compare past and present. This allows the child to detect and sometimes fear unusual or unpredictable phenomena. The onset of the «stranger response» coincides with the emergence of a fear response to a variety of unusual or unexpected stimuli; a fancy mask or «Jack in the box» (a box with a pop-up figure. — Approx. Trans.), causing a smile in a 4-month-old child, at 8 months often causes fear and distress. As children learn that strangers and unusual objects are generally harmless, such fears gradually subside.
In addition, it is reasonable to assume that anxiety during separation from a parent is associated with the development of memory. An infant cannot miss a parent unless it is able to remember its presence a moment ago and compare it with its current absence. When the parent leaves the room, the child becomes aware that something is wrong (like knowing the permanence of the object) and may become upset. When the child’s memory improves enough to cover past occurrences of departure and return, he becomes able to anticipate the return of the absent parent, and his anxiety subsides.
The second factor is the growth of independence. One-year-olds are still too dependent on adults, but children 2-3 years old can already reach a plate of food or a shelf with toys by themselves. In addition, they may use speech to communicate their desires and feelings. Thus, dependence on caregivers in general and on family caregivers in particular decreases, and the issue of parental presence becomes less critical for the child.
Attachment
The child’s desire for intimacy with specific people, accompanied by a feeling of greater security in their presence, is called attachment. In other species, babies show affection for their mothers in different ways. The baby monkey climbs on the mother’s chest when she passes nearby; puppies climb one on top of the other, trying to get to the warm belly of the mother; ducklings and chickens follow their mother relentlessly, make sounds to which she responds, and approach her when they are afraid. These first reactions to the mother have an obvious adaptive value: they keep the organism from wandering away from the source of care and getting lost.
At first, psychologists believed that attachment to the mother develops because the mother is a source of food — one of the main needs of the infant. But some facts do not fit here. For example, ducklings and chickens feed themselves from birth, but still relentlessly follow their mother and spend a huge amount of time with her. The comfort they derive from her presence cannot come from her role in nutrition. A number of well-known experiments with monkeys have shown that the attachment of the infant to the mother is due not only to the need for food (Harlow & Harlow, 1969).
Baby monkeys were separated from their mothers shortly after birth and placed with two artificial mothers made of wire mesh with a wooden head. One torso was made of bare wire, while the other was covered with foam rubber and terrycloth, making it more attractive and comfortable to snuggle up (Figure 3.9). Each «mother» could be equipped with a bottle attached to her breast for feeding milk.
The experimenters sought to determine whether the cub would snuggle up to the «mother» that had always been a source of food for him. The results were unambiguous: no matter which mother gave milk, the baby spent most of its time cuddling up to the mother, who was covered in terrycloth. The more passive but soft-touch mother was a source of security. For example, if a baby monkey was placed in an unfamiliar environment, its pronounced fear would disappear if it could touch the cloth mother. Holding on to the cloth mother with one hand or foot, the monkey eagerly studied objects that otherwise she was very afraid to approach.
Although contact with an attractive artificial mother is an important part of «motherhood», this is not enough for successful development. Monkey cubs raised with artificial mothers and isolated from other monkeys during the first 6 months of life showed various kinds of strange behavior in adulthood. Subsequently, they rarely participated in normal interactions with other monkeys (by cowering in fear or exhibiting abnormal aggressiveness), and their sexual responses were inadequate. When female monkeys deprived of early social contact successfully mated (after considerable effort), they became bad mothers, neglecting or abusing their firstborns, although they were better mothers to later-born babies. Note, however, that these monkeys were deprived of all social contact. If monkeys with an artificial mother were allowed to communicate with their peers for the first 6 months, they became «beautiful adults.»
One should be cautious about translating monkey studies to human development, but there is evidence that the human infant’s attachment to the primary caregiver serves the same function. Most of the work on attachment in human infants was started by psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the 50s and 60s. His attachment theory combines the concepts of psychoanalysis, ethology and cognitive psychology. According to his theory, if a child fails to form a strong attachment to at least one person in the early years, this leads to an inability to develop close personal relationships in adulthood (Bowlby, 1973).
Mary Ainsworth, one of Bowlby’s colleagues, conducted extensive observations of children and their mothers in the United States and Uganda, subsequently developing a laboratory method for assessing the strength of attachment in children aged 12-18 months and older (Ainsworth et al., 1978). This technique is called «Situation with a stranger» and consists of a series of consecutive episodes (Table 3.3).
Table 3.3. Episodes of the procedure in a situation with a stranger
Throughout the sequence, the child is observed through a translucent mirror, and some observations are recorded: activity level and involvement in the game, crying and other signs of distress, closeness to the mother and attempts to capture her attention, closeness to a stranger and willingness to interact with her, etc. Depending on the behavior of children, they were divided into three main groups:
Strong affection
Whether or not they were upset when the mother left (episodes 3 and 5), children assigned to the strong attachment group sought to contact her when she returned. For some, it was enough to make sure at a distance that she was coming and continue to play with toys. Others sought physical contact with her. Some were completely engrossed in their mother throughout the episodes and showed great distress when she came out. In general, 60-65% of American children fall into this category.
Loose Attachment: Avoidance
It was noticeable that these infants avoided interaction with their mother during her return episodes. Some ignored the mother almost completely, some made mixed attempts to interact and avoid interaction. Avoidant children might pay very little attention to their mother while she was in the room, and often did not seem upset when she left. And if they were upset, they consoled themselves with a stranger just as easily as with their mother. Approximately 20% of American children fall into this category.
Fragile attachment: ambivalence
Infants were assigned to the group of ambivalent behavior in the event that in the episodes of the return of the mother, they resisted her. They simultaneously sought physical contact and resisted it.
For example, they could cry when they were picked up and then get angry when they were put down. Some acted very passively, demanding the mother when she returned, but did not crawl towards her, and when she approached, they offered resistance. Approximately 10% of American children fall into this category.
Since some children did not fit into any of these categories, a fourth category, disorganized, was introduced in later studies (Main & Solomon, 1986). Children in this category behave inconsistently. For example, they may approach their mother, trying not to look at her, approach her, and then suddenly run away from her, or first calm down, and then suddenly burst into tears. Some children appear disoriented, show no visible emotion, or appear depressed. This category now includes about 10-15% of American children, and this proportion is much higher among children who have been mistreated or who live at home with parents who are being treated by a psychiatrist.
Sensitive responsiveness
In an effort to explain differences in children’s attachment, researchers have paid close attention to the behavior of the primary caregiver, usually the mother. Their main discovery was that it is precisely the sensitive responsiveness of the caregiver to the needs of the child that creates a strong attachment. This becomes apparent as early as 3 months of age. For example, mothers of children with strong attachments usually react immediately to the crying of the child and are gentle when they take him in her arms. They usually adapt well to the needs of the child (Clarke-Stewart, 1973). For example, when feeding, they use the baby’s signals to determine when to start and stop feeding, and also pay attention to the baby’s food preferences and measure the pace of feeding and the speed at which he eats.
In contrast, the mothers of children who exhibited one of the two types of insecure attachment responded largely on their own volition or mood rather than on the basis of the child’s cues. For example, when a child demanded attention, they responded if they wanted to hug him, and in other cases ignored his calls (Stayton, 1973).
Not all psychologists agree that caregiver responsiveness is the main source of differences in the nature of a child’s attachment. They pay attention to the child’s own innate temperament (Kagan, 1984; Campos et al., 1983). It is possible, for example, that the child’s temperament, which characterizes him as more «easy», also makes his attachment stronger than in «difficult» children. And, as we noted above, the parental reaction to the child largely depends on the child’s own behavior. For example, mothers of difficult children spend less time playing with them (Green, Fox & Lewis, 1983). The nature of attachment, apparently, reflects this relationship between the temperament of the child and the responsiveness of his parents.
In response to this, those who study attachment present data in favor of the responsive caregiver hypothesis. For example, it was found that the crying of an infant during the first year of his life changes much more than the reaction of the mother to crying. In addition, based on the response of the mother during the first 3 months, one can predict much more accurately how the baby will cry in the next 3 months than, based on the crying of the baby, predict how the mother will react to him. In short, the mother appears to have more influence on the infant’s cry than the infant influences the mother’s response (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972). In general, the establishment of a child’s attachment or attachment seems to be most determined by the behavior of the mother (Isabella & Belsky, 1991).
Newer research may help resolve this controversy. Recall that the classification of attachment types in the «Situation with a Stranger» experiment was carried out primarily not by how upset the baby was after the mother left, but by how he reacted to her return. It now appears that the child’s temperament determines the former, but not the latter (Vaughn et al., 1989; Frodi & Thompson, 1985). For example, children with a «light» temperament, as a rule, do not get upset when the mother leaves. Upon her return, they either happily greet her (strong attachment type) or avoid her (loose attachment type). Children with a «difficult» temperament tend to get upset when their mother leaves. When she returns, they either aspire and cling to her, showing strong affection, or showing ambivalent affection (Belsky & Rovine, 1987). Thus, the overall reaction of the child to the departure and return of his main caregiver is determined both by the responsiveness of the caregiver to the needs of the child, and the temperament of the child himself.
It turned out that the classification of children’s attachment types remains quite stable when the «Situation with a Stranger» is repeated several years later, unless the circumstances of the family’s life have undergone significant changes (Main & Cassidy, 1988; Thompson, Lamb & Estes, 1982). The changes in a stressful life seem to affect the parent’s responsiveness to the child, which in turn affects his sense of security.
The type of early attachment also determines how the child will acquire new experiences in the next few years. For example, in one study, 2-year-old children were given a series of tasks that required the use of tools. Some of the tasks were within the capabilities of the child, and some were very difficult. Toddlers who had strong attachment at 12 months of age took on the task with enthusiasm and perseverance. When they had difficulties, they rarely cried or got angry, rather they sought help from the adults present. Children who previously had weak attachment behaved in a completely different way. They became easily frustrated and angry, rarely sought help, ignored or rejected adult advice, and quickly gave up trying to solve a problem (Matas, Arend & Sroufe, 1978).
From these and other similar studies, it appears that children who have developed strong attachments by the start of their second year of life are better prepared to acquire new experiences and enter into new relationships. However, it cannot be confidently asserted that the quality of a child’s attachment at a young age will directly determine his competence in problem solving and social skills in the future. Parents who were responsive to the needs of their child in infancy, as a rule, continue to be good parents during his early childhood, which contribute to the development of independence of the child, the acquisition of new experience; they are always ready to help him when needed. Thus, the competence and social skills of a child at the age of 3,5 years may not reflect the relationship between parents and the child that existed two years earlier, but their current state. In addition, the child’s subsequent competence in the preschool years can also be influenced by his temperament: we saw earlier how it affects the behavior of children in the experiment «Situation with a Stranger». (The question of the results of education in nurseries and kindergartens is discussed in the U.E.Ike «At the forefront of psychological research»).
Sexual (gender) identity and gender formation
With rare exceptions, human beings are divided into two sexes, and most children acquire a strong sense of belonging to either male or female. At the same time, they have what in developmental psychology is called sexual (gender) identity. See →