Bowbly's theory of maternal deprivation

• "Mother-love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for the physical health."
• Separation vs deprivation:

  • S- child not in presence of primary caregiver- only becomes a problem if child becomes deprived of emotional care.
  • Extended separation can lead to deprivation- can cause harm
• Critical period:

  • First 2 and 1/2 years
  • If deprived if emotional care in this time then psychological damage was inevitable.
  • Continuous risk up to 5.
• Effects on development:

  • Intellectual- would experience delayed intellectual development characterised by lower IQ.
  • Goldfarb- found lower IQ in children who d remained in institutions as opposed to those who were fostered and thus had a higher standard of emotional care.
  • Emotional- Bowbly identified affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others
  • Lack remorse for their actions
• Bowbly's 44 thieves:

  • Procedure- 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing.
  • All thieves interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy: lack of affection, guilt and empathy.
  • Families also interviewed to establish a prolonged early experience.
  • Sample compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people.
• Bowbly's 44 thieves:

  • Findings- 14 of 44 could be affectionless psychopathy and 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mother's in first 2 years.
  • Concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy
• Limitation: Flawed evidence

  • Poor quality of evidence it is based on
  • 44 thieves flawed as it was Bowlb himself who carried out both family interviews and assessments from affectionless psychopathy.
  • Left him open to bias as he knew in advance which teenagers he expected to show signed of psychopathy
  • Means Bowbly's original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and wouldn't be taken seriously as evidence nowadays.
• Counterpoint to flawed evidence:

  • New line of research provided some modest support for idea that maternal deprivation can have long-term effects.
  • Lévy- showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development
  • Means that although Bowbly relied on flawed evidence to support his theory, there are other sources of evidence for his idea
• Limitation: deprivation and privation

  • His confusion between different types of early experience.
  • Rutter- privation is failure to form any attachment in first place- pointed out that the severe long term damage Bowbly associated with deprivation is actually more likely to be the result of privation
  • Means Bowbly may have overestimated the seriousness of the effects of deprivation in children's development
• Limitation: critical vs sensitive periods

  • Bowbly's idea of a critical period
  • For Bowbly- damage ws inevitable if a child had not formed attachment in first 2 and 1/2 years
  • But- Koluchová- Czech twins
  • Twins experienced very severe physical and emotional abuse from the age of 18 months up until 7
  • But they received excellent care and by their teens they had fully recovered.
  • Means that lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation. The 'critical period' therefore seen as a 'sensitive period'.