Mathew Thomson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199677481
- eISBN:
- 9780191757006
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199677481.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Social History
This chapter focuses on post-war popularization of the ideas of John Bowlby and fellow attachment psychologists. It suggests that this was an important dimension of the post-war social settlement, ...
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This chapter focuses on post-war popularization of the ideas of John Bowlby and fellow attachment psychologists. It suggests that this was an important dimension of the post-war social settlement, extending it into the realm of childcare and emotional security. Bowlbyism helped to justify reliance on the family, and women in particular, as the central providers of childcare. In cultivating a social democratic model of subjectivity, and in emphasizing the importance of freedom to play and relationships, it also, however, offered a social democratic vision of child development that could be in tension with the narrow landscape of home. The second half of the chapter traces the collapse of confidence in attachment and home as these tensions became apparent and as they came up against social changes including the problems of life in high flats and of social isolation, the realities of increasing levels of employment for women, and post-war immigrationLess
This chapter focuses on post-war popularization of the ideas of John Bowlby and fellow attachment psychologists. It suggests that this was an important dimension of the post-war social settlement, extending it into the realm of childcare and emotional security. Bowlbyism helped to justify reliance on the family, and women in particular, as the central providers of childcare. In cultivating a social democratic model of subjectivity, and in emphasizing the importance of freedom to play and relationships, it also, however, offered a social democratic vision of child development that could be in tension with the narrow landscape of home. The second half of the chapter traces the collapse of confidence in attachment and home as these tensions became apparent and as they came up against social changes including the problems of life in high flats and of social isolation, the realities of increasing levels of employment for women, and post-war immigration
