The Influence Of The Home Rearing Environment On Attachment Formation And The Social-emotional Development

Objective:Infancy and early childhood are critical period of attachment formation and social-emotional development of children. Attachment is of great significance to children’s development of personality and socialization, as an intense interpersonal bond originally appeared at early childhood. It is very important to probe into what having the impact on attachment development. Among the many factors, the home environment absolutely is very important one. Families as the basic element of society, where a child completely spend his early life, play a crucial role in the formation of attachment. Previous studies just focused on single family factors, such as family structure, family income, parental education level and parental occupation etc, researchers seldom took an attention to the overall effect on attachment from home nurture environments. Since some studies had shown that the effect of single factor on psychological development was very limited, it is particularly valuable and profound to explore the integrated influence on child psychological development of the home nurture model. And there have been few studies in early child social-emotional development. Child social-emotional development is affected somewhat by variety of home and social environmental factors. As for early childhood, the home nurture is the dominant environment factor and has a lasting and profound impact on child’s social-emotional development. At the same time, the attachment as the iconic beginning of social development of children also has an important influence on children’s social-emotional development. Children’s attachment and social-emotion as important psychological subject and interacted closely each other, both are affected by the home environment directly and significantly. But what is the difference of these effects between them? How are attachment and social emotion related? There is still a lack of systematic research for that in China and overseas. To focus on the actual needs of early childhood psychological development, this study synthetically explores some affect factors of the formation of attachment and social-emotional development of the child, especially home environmental factors. Then analyzes the relationship between the attachment formation and the social-emotional development, in order to improve nurture behaviors in the child healthcare practice, and provide the theoretical basis to promote the formation of the secure attachment in children and early childhood social development.Methods:128toddlers were selected by random sampling from the children who have been participating in the Children healthcare program performed by Children Healthcare Center of Shandong Province Maternal Hospital.1-3years child nurture environment scale,1-3years toddler temperament scale,12-36months infant and toddler social and emotional assessment were used as assessment tools and the Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure (SSP) was adopted to assess the characters of toddler attachment. Fallowing the Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure (SSP), mother and baby were arranged synchronously or subsequently stay and interact in the observation room. By the end of the SSP, mother filled out the1-3years child home nurture environment questionnaire and synchronously took care of her baby. All the actions of mother and baby in various experimental scenes were monitored and recorded by the video. After the experiment, The four researchers, with an intensive training, were divided into2groups, and valued and score the every experimental scenes carefully by replayed and watched the video record with the scoring system for interactive behaviors in the strange situation, which is compiled by Ainsworth and amended by Waters etc. The scores and classifying of the attachment mainly according to the child’s proximity to a person, maintaining contact, avoidance and resistance behaviors (especially in Episode2,5,8). Toddler temperament scale and12-36months infant and toddler social and emotional assessment scale were filled after leaving the experimental scene by their mothers. To ensure the original data is accurate and reliable, the Researchers were strictly trained for data collection. When the questionnaires were collected, the researchers would conduct on-site verification, to avoid any wrongs or miss. All questionnaires were scored and judged with their own proprietary software. After an uniform verification of the data, the database was built with Epidata3.0software, SPSS16.0software was used for x2test, t test, variance analysis, correlation analysis and other statistical analysis.Results:There are99secure-attachment (77.3%),24avoidant-attachment (18.8%), and5resistant-attachment (3.9%) among the128toddlers, no disorganized-attachment. There were statistical differences between major nurturers, family structure, who did co-sleep alongside the child at night in the distribution of children’s attachment types. There were significant differences in maternal sensitivities between toddler’s attachment types. There were significant differences only in the approach-withdrawal of toddler temperament between toddler’s attachment types; Secure-attachment and resistant-attachment toddlers score significantly higher than avoidant-attachment in the approach-withdrawal dimension, there was a significant correlation between the approach-withdrawal, mood, persistence and distractive dimension of toddler temperament and maintain contact and avoidance; There were significant differences in home nurture environment factors including warm feelings/ambience, neglect/punishment between toddler’s attachment types. Secure-attachment children score significantly higher than avoidant-attachment in warm feelings/ambience, neglect/punishment dimension. There was a significant correlation between the home nurture environment factors including language/cognition, warm feelings/ambience, neglect/punishment and maintain contact, avoidance and resistance. There were statistical differences in some dimensions of toddler social-emotional development between singletons or not, maternal perinatal mentality, family structure, educational level of parents, feeding patterns in their first yea. There were significant differences in externalizing behavior dimension, internalizing behavior dimension, competence dimension of toddler social-emotional development between toddler’s temperament types, difficult temperament toddlers score significantly higher than easy temperament and slow-to-warm-up temperament in externalizing behavior dimension, in internalizing behavior dimension, difficult temperament and slow-to-warm-up temperament toddlers score significantly higher than easy temperament, in competence dimension, slow-to-warm-up temperament toddlers score significantly lower than easy temperament; There was a significant correlation between activity, rhythmicity, adaptability, intensity of response, mood, persistence, distractibility dimension of temperament and some dimensions of toddler social-emotional development; There was a significant positive correlation between sensitivity factor of maternal sensitivities, warm feelings/ambience, social adaptation/self-care factors of the home nurture environment and competence dimension of toddler social-emotional development.Conclusion:In this study, the children have markedly different attachment characteristics comparable with the west:There is a higher proportion of secure attachment in128toddlers, no disorganized-attachment. The avoidant-attachment children have the similar avoidant behaviors to their mothers, but these children seldom appear obvious anxiety, and be seldom interrupted their exploratory behaviors. Despite resistant-attachment children have obvious refusal behaviors, but no obvious resistance to their mothers, instead these children are high level of approach and maintain contact deriving from their obvious anxiety. The home nurture environment factors have obvious effects on attachment. The dimensions of temperament have some affection on the toddlers’behaviors at SSP; Family structure, major nurturers etc, have certain influence on the nature of child attachment; The maternal sensitivities are important factors in child attachment development; The home nurture environment factors including warm feelings/ambience, neglect/punishment have certain influence to the nature of child attachment. The home nurture environment is an important factor in toddler social-emotional development. Maternal good mood during perinatal stage, one-child family, better-educated parents, breast-feeding, easy temperament toddlers, good maternal sensitivities, good warm feelings/ambience, social adaptation/self-care factors of the home nurture environment all benefit toddler social-emotional development. Conversely, maternal anxiety during perinatal stage, the extended family, lower-educated parents, artificial feeding, difficult temperament and slow-warm-up temperament toddlers, poor maternal sensitivities and rearing style are disadvantageous to toddler social-emotional development.