Maternal Deprivation / Institutionalisation

• Bowlby’s maternal deprivation

  Bowlby argued that children needs to have continuous love and support during their critical period. If a child experiences prolonged periods of separation during the first 2 1⁄2 years and no substitute care then this would lead to irreversible damage, such as, affectionless psychopathy, delinquency, intellectual difficulties and problems with social relationships. This can continue into later life as they will have developed a negative internal working model.
• Bowlby’s 44 juvenile thieves study

  Aim: To see if early separation was associated with behavioural problems such as affectionless psychopathy.

  Procedure: 44 thieves were studied. He interviewed their families to assess the separation in early childhood.

  Findings: 40% of the thieves had been separated from their mother compared to only 4% of the control group. 70% of the separated thieves had affectionless psychopathy compared to 7% of the non separated thieves.

  Conclusion: Suggest a link between early separation and affectionless psychopathy and antisocial behaviour.
• Maternal deprivation evaluation

  Harlow’s research supports the concept of maternal deprivation, whilst

  Koluchova’s criticises it. Huge real world application of the theory as it changed hospital practises so parents and infants are not separated for prolonged periods of time. Bowlby carried out the interviews himself. This could increase the influence of investigator bias, for example he could have classified so many thieves as affectionless because he wanted evidence to support his theory. This damages the internal validity of the results.
• Maternal deprivation evaluation

  The study collected correlational data – we cannot say for definite that the deprivation caused the psychopathy or delinquency - Other extraneous variables, such as diet, parental income, education etc. may have affected the behaviour of the 44 thieves. The study included retrospective data - asking the mothers to look back and recall separations - these memories may not be accurate - damages the internal validity.