ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how attitudes towards children have varied over time and culture. It outlines changing attitudes towards emotional development in childhood. An unhappy child finds it difficult to focus on learning because emotional tension interferes with his/her ability to process information systematically. Philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries helped to change Western views of childhood. One ‘school’ of thought was that children are born inherently selfish and their base instincts had to be controlled by society. Bowlby’s original theory was one of maternal deprivation, influenced by his training in Freudian psychoanalysis. It has been suggested that there are parallels between Bowlby’s concept of maternal deprivation and Freud’s concept of oral deprivation; both lead to predictable negative outcomes in adulthood. The key characteristic of ethology is a focus on observing the whole organism in the context of its interaction with other animals and its environment.
