Maternal Deprivation

• Rutter (1981) questioned Bowlby’s theory that it was separation itself that caused the harmful long term effects. He studied over 2000 boys aged 9-12 who had been separated from their mothers. He was researching whether the separation led them to turn to crime later in life.
• Rutter found that if the mother left due to illness or death, there was no change in the chances of the boy turning to crime. However, i the mother left the psychological disorders or arguments, they were 4x more likely to turn to crime later in life. This tells us that it was perhaps not the separation itself that led to increases in turning to crime, but the stress that came before the separation.
• Strethearn et al (2008) looked at fMRI scans and saw that the reward centre of the brain activated when a mother saw a picture of their own child smiling, but not other children
• Harlow (1957-63) held an experiment of infant rhesus monkeys. They were separated from their mothers at birth and were placed in A cage with two surrogate mothers. One was made of cloth, the other was made of wire and gave milk. It was found that the infant spent almost all of its time with the cloth mother rather than the wire mother, despite the fact that it was the only one that gave food. This shows us that there is a instinctive need for comfort.
• Zimmerman et al (2000) held a longitudinal study on 44 children on Germany. They were initially assessed between 12-18 months, and were then assessed again at 16. At 12-18 months, he tested their response to separation and strangers.
• When assessing the now 16 year olds, Zimmerman used interviews focusing on their relationship with their parents.
• Zimmerman found that infant attachment style was a bad predictor of adolescent attachment style.
• Bowlby (1944) conducted a study with 44 juvenile thieves and 44 non-thieves. He found that 17/44 of the thieves had experienced prolonged maternal deprivation before the age of 5. Many of them were diagnosed as Affectionless Psychopaths.
• Affectionless Psychopathy


  the inability to feel remorse