Discovering Bowlby: infant homes and attachment theory in West Germany after the Second World War

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the changes in infant homes for children under the age of three in West Germany after the Second World War by combining two research perspectives. First, it will show that the increase in institutional care in the decade after 1945 was not simply dictated by a growing number of orphans. Instead, it primarily resulted from the way how authorities dealt with single mothers and their children. In a second step, the adverse influence of Maternal Care and Mental Health, the WHO report by British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, will be analysed. It will become clear that this monograph from 1951 was enormously influential within West German infant home education, such that institutional care for children under the age of three was almost completely abolished only a few years later. Thus, the paper contributes to the historization of residential childcare and of attachment theory.