Publisher's Synopsis
INTRODUCTION It is often said that rearing the child is the most difficult job in the world, and it is almost impossible to do it perfectly. No parents are able to raise perfect, completely secure and reliant children. Parents must respond to child with respect, warmth, and empathy if the child is to acquire a normal sense of self-worth. Children cared for by stable mother figures that are sensitive, receptive and open to their natural demands of proximity and affection tend to develop a secure attachment. Throughout centuries maternal love has been advocated as the most universal emotion, a feeling that is both carnal and spiritual, perhaps the strongest and most deeply-rooted emotional tie developed by humankind. This bond has a basically giving, altruistic side - that of the caring mother - and an essentially receptive, incorporative side - that of the clinging child. Motherly love is the breath of life that makes a child human and shapes its identity making it unique. The infant when born carries heredity factors, drives and mechanisms of learning with which he can operate within the frame work laid down by the society. Parents and others influence the individual and impress the accepted ways of living and lay a foundation for the later personality of individual. Personality development is greatly influenced by experiences with attachment figures. Freud was probably the first psychologist to focus on personality development and to stress the role of infancy and early childhood in forming the person's character. He believed that after about the end of the fifth year of life, growth and change in personality consisted largely of elaborating the basic structure formed in the first years of the child's existence,
