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Contemporary Debates

Debate: The Mother as Primary Care-Giver of an Infant — arguments on each side of it

  • 3 things to know
  • AS Unit 2

Overview

Twelve recall questions on debate: The Mother as Primary Care-Giver of an Infant — arguments on each side of it.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Numbers

State the refrigerator mother and schizophrenogenic mother claims, and their present status.

Study

What did Koluchova's study of the Czech twins demonstrate?

Who and when

What did van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988) find about attachment across cultures?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did Koluchova's study of the Czech twins demonstrate?

    Model answer

    Two boys who suffered extreme early privation and isolation recovered substantially after being placed with devoted foster carers, showing that early damage is not necessarily permanent.

  2. 2

    Why is Field (1978) used against the mother-only position?

    Model answer

    She found that fathers acting as primary caregiver showed the same smiling, imitative and holding behaviours towards their infants as primary-caregiver mothers, suggesting the behaviour follows the role rather than the sex of the parent.

  3. 3

    What did van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988) find about attachment across cultures?

    Model answer

    Pooling 32 Strange Situation studies from eight countries, secure attachment was the commonest type everywhere, but variation within a country was around one and a half times greater than variation between countries.

  4. 4

    What did Tronick et al. (1992) observe among the Efe?

    Model answer

    Efe infants were cared for and even breastfed by several women from birth, yet by around six months still showed a clear preference for their own mother, a finding both sides of the debate claim.

  5. 5

    Why is the Strange Situation criticised as a measure in this debate?

    Model answer

    It was built around Western, largely middle-class expectations of how mothers and infants behave, so behaviour that is normal elsewhere can be misclassified as insecurity.

  6. 6

    What did the refrigerator mother theory claim, and why is it rejected?

    Model answer

    Bettelheim and others argued in the mid-twentieth century that autism was caused by cold, unloving mothering; the claim has no evidential support and has been displaced by evidence of substantial genetic and neurodevelopmental influence, but it left mothers blamed and some children removed from their families.

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