Health and social care - Essay Example

The Attachment Theory has been described as the "well-researched explanation of infant and toddler behavior and in the field of infant mental health". The theory has related the "developmentally appropriate mental health interventions to sensitively foster emotional relationships between young children and adults". The critics have regarded as a proposal of Bowbly as a medium for "controversial interventions popularly known as attachment therapy" (Bowbly, 1971). According to John Bowlby, the close relationship between the infant and parent was "founding catalyst to attachment", "children who were separated from their mothers developed significantly slower and inferior to their peers, this condition of division between mother and child was explained as Maternal Deprivation" (Bowbly, 1971).

According to Bowlby the nature of attachment theory is based upon four principle theories, the Theory of Secondary Drive, which stated that children have certain physiological needs and requirements because of which the child is more affiliated towards his/her mother, the reason being that the mother shares the capability to provide mental comfort to the child. The Theory of Primary Object Sucking has stated that "the infant intrinsically has a tendency towards the human breast which in later stages transform into an attached child-breast or child-mother relationship".

The Theory of Primary Object Clinging has explained that "infants inherently have a predisposition to clutch or touch another human being" (Bowbly, 1975). The Theory of Primary Return-to-Womb Craving has explained that "infants the seek to return to the womb despising their environmental state" (Bowbly, 1971). The discussed theories have supported. The author of the paper "Health and Social Care" analyses social development on the basis of two theoretical approaches. He proposed Maternal Care and Mental Health, in which he elaborated the theory of Maternal Deprivation.