Attachment and Their Role in Intergenerational Continuity Essay

Attachment and Their Role in Intergenerational Continuity - Essay Example However, the attachment that humans experience is not utilitarian nor is it driven merely by a drive to satisfy some basic needs. Animal and human attachment process are directly linked to the social aspects of our lives and the constraints of survival in an uncertain environment. Bowlby's Theory of Attachment is of great value in studying the competence of human being in the struggle for survival, which in Darwin's view is possible based on fitness. The current evolutionary thinking considers structures and behavioral systems found in the population contributed to the reproductive success of the bearers in the milieu of evolutionary adapted ness. The biological function of attachment is to provide the conditions that keep proximity between infant and caregiver, which is essential for the infant to survive in a hostile environment. The caregiver-child strategies are aimed at accomplishing three universal goals. The are infant survival and eventual reproduction, economic self-sufficiency, and enculturation (Levine, 1982) The process of natural selection prefers individuals who invest a great deal on childcare and rearing. Thus the parents who devote to protect their offspring from hostile forces around them, like predatory and parasitic animals do so by developing bonds affection between them and their offspring. During early days of growth the young learn to discriminate between the parent that cares for them and other member of their species because parents discriminate between their own offspring and other small ones in the same species and may actually show aggression to young which are not their own. The child develops the filial imprinting and the young in no time learns to recognize their parents and follow them everywhere keeping nearness and close contact with them and shunning all but the close kin. With the development of locomotion, the child becomes an explorer. Nevertheless, its exploration of the environment is a gradual process and in a way an antithetical to attachment. The child does not embark upon a path of exploration suddenly. Initially there are spurts of exploration and return to a security zone (mother). In the interplay between exploration and return to the safety zone the child is trained to achieve a balance in his foray in to the world of danger. One of the most salient roles of the attachment behavior is to intervene in the baby's explorations of the environment and to keep it under leash so that through a slow process the child may gain the confidence to face the world alone. It is amazing that babies also actively cooperate in this process. Children approach their caregivers not only in response to danger but to ascertain their presence, which becomes an anchor for the children to explore securely the environment. Scientists have studied the nature of the attachments and made certain categories. However, these categories may not be considered as exclusive watertight compartments. The patterns of attachment are four: secure attachment, anxious-ambivalent insecure attachment, and anxious-avoidant insecure attachment and disorganized attachment. The four patterns of attachment has great ramification in the study of human behavior and can give important clues to adult behavior later in