Maternal Deprivation

• What is deprivation?

  A primary attachment has been formed but the infant has been separated and this has caused bond disruption
• What are the main bullet points of the maternal deprivation hypothesis?

  • Emotional care is as important as physical care
  • Breaking the maternal bond is likely to have intellectual, social and emotional development 
  • Children would have difficulty forming general relationships and also have behavioural disorders, which Bowlby claimed were permanent
  • Anyone who is denied maternal care due to frequent separation has a critical period of about 2.5 years before they become emotionally disturbed
  • Risk goes until 5 years
• What is the key study of maternal deprivation?

  Bowlby (1944)
• What was the procedure of Bowlby (1944)?

  • 88 p’s aged 5 to 16 where half of them were juvenile delinquents and the other half had not committed crimes
  • 14 of the 44 juvenile delinquents were “affectionless psychopaths”
  • The affectionless psychopaths had no guilt or remorse in stealing
  • The non criminals were the control group
  • Bowlby interviewed the children and the parents for a picture of their life experience
• What were the findings of the affectionless psychopaths?

  • 86% of the affectionless psychopaths had experienced separation due to being in foster homes or hospitals compared to 14% with no separation
  • Almost none of the control experienced separation
• What was a negative evaluation regarding methdology?


  • The study uses retrospective data, which means the children and parents are forced to think back a long time ago.
  • This can produce inaccuracies.
  • There may have been researcher bias as he himself has done the study
  • Expectancy effects as he was testing his own theory. 
• What were real life applications of the Bowlby study?

  • Real life application -
  • It caused a positive change for infant care.
  • Only physical care was deemed important before.
  • This led to improvement in emotional care to take account of emotional needs including trying to keep children in one foster home.
  • Parents were allowed to stay in hospital with children and longer visiting hours were allowed. 
• What was a criticism study?

  • Rutter (1981) -
  • Early separation and later readjustment are linked but does not mean that one caused the other.
  • He claims that it is the circumstance of separation that influences, not merely separation.
  • To test this, he carried out the Isle of Wight study:
  • He used 2000 boys aged from 9 to 11 and their families were interviewed as well:

  1. If separation was due to death or illness, there was no correlation with delinquency
  2. If the correlation was due to discord or psychiatric illness, the boy was 4x as likely to be delinquent
• What was a socially sensitive problem of Bowlby's research?

  • Bowlby’s study was criticised as the research was published after the war.
  • This was at a time when women had assumed male jobs
  • He was being criticised that his research was going to be used to give returning males their jobs, leaving the women home.
  • It is socially sensitive.