Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

• Deprivation

  • Loved and lost

  • Deprivation occurs when the attachment bond is formed but is broken later on in life
• Privation

  • Never to have loved ( or been loved at all)

  • Privation occurs when a child doesn’t form any attachment at all
• Background

  Bowlby noticed that children who had deprivation tended to be troubled and behind in terms of intellectual and emotional development

  He proposed that maternal deprivation would have long term consequences for the child
• Bowlby believed that infants need more than just food and warmth they need a warm intimate and continuing relationship with a mother to ensure normal mental health
• Bowlby’s hypothesis

  • If the mother infant attachment is broken in the first 2.5 years of life, the child’s emotional, social , intellectual and even physical development will be seriously harmed

  • Bowlby felt there was a risk of disturbance up to the age of 5

  • These children also experience severe separation anxiety in fear of another separation from the carer

  -the child may become very clingy or avoid going to school

  -Emotional instability may affect future relationships -this can be linked to Bowlbys idea of an internal working model
• What are the effects of mental deprivation

  • Emotionally disturbed behaviour such as bedwetting

  • Physical underdevelopment

  • Intellectual retardation

  • An inability to make relationships

  • Criminal behaviour

  • Emotional and mental health problems e.g. Depression
• Institution

  A place where people live for a long period of time e.g. orphanage or prison
• Institutionalisation

  The effect of growing up in an orphanage or children's home. Children who are raised in these institutions often suffer from a lack of emotional care, which means that children are unable to form attachments
• Romanian orphans

  • in 1966 the Romanian Government tried to increase the Romanian population by encouraging people to have large families so they banned contraception and adoption

  • However, as people found that they could not care for large families, many babies were institutionalised in orphanages

  • The children spent most of their time alone in cribs and has very little emotional or cognitive stimulation. They were malnourished and uncared for . Some were abused and severely neglected

  • When the regime collapsed in 1989 there were more than 100,000 orphans
• 44 Juvenile thieves aim

  Bowlby worked with children with emotional problems at the London Child Guidance clinic . He wanted to investigate the long-term effects of maternal deprivation

  Bowlby coined a particular disorder ,”affection less psychopathy” which describes individuals who lacked normal signs of emotions and had no guilt or empathy
• 44 Juvenile thieves procedure

  Bowlby selected an opportunity sample of 88 children ages 5-16 attending his clinic (they all had emotional problems) These children were split into two groups which were matched for age and IQ

  • Group 1 - Thief group - 44 teamsters who had been caught stealing

  • Group 2 control group (not thieves )

  The children and parents were interviewed about their early life experiences
• 44 juvenile thieves' findings

  Thief group:

  • 14 of the thieves were identified as affection-less psychopaths and 12(27%) of these had experienced frequent separation from their mothers in their first 2 years of life

  • only 5 of the other 30 'thieves' had experienced separations

  Control group:

  only 2 had experienced early separations and none of them were affection-less psychopaths
• 44 Juvenile Thieves conclusion

  Early separations are linked to maternal deprivation. This suggests that lack of continuous care can lead to emotional maladaptiveness (Problems), mental disorders, and even criminal behavior
• Disadvantages of 44 Juvenile thieves

  ❌ correlational study- cant conclude that the separation causes affectionless psychopaths

  ❌ Lewis replicated it on a larger scale looking at 500 people and found that early separation doesn't cause criminal behaviour

  ❌ The data collected was from interviews therefore there were demand characteristics

  ❌ Lacks temporal validity

  ❌ Retrospective data there are problems when reflecting on the past as people may forget specifics
• Advantages of 44 juvenile thieves

  ✔️ Highly controlled

  ✔️ Applicable to real world situations - helps with guiding parents
• Strength of 44 Juvenile thieves

  ✔️ Bowlby's MDH led to:

  • Orphanages improving care in terms of emotionless needs

  • Fostered children, where possible, being kept in one foster home rather than being moved about

  • Mothers spending more time with babies in maternity units

  • Provision for parents being able to stay with their younger children in hospitals and being allowed much longer visiting
• Strength of 44 Juvenile thieves

  ✔️ Goldfarb found that orphanage children who were socially and maternally deprived were less intellectually and socially developed later in life
• Weakness of 44 Juvenile thieves

  ❌ The 44 thieves study shows a link between deprivation and affectionless psychopaths, but it doesn't mean that deprivation causes affectionless psychopaths. Other factors such as poverty and education may have caused this
• Weakness of 44 juvenile thieves

  ❌ Experimenter bias may have occurred in the 44 thieves study as Bowlby designed and conducted the experiment himself and was responsible for the diagnosis of affectionless psychopaths
• Weakness of 44 Juvenile thieves

  ❌ Koluchova studies the Czech twin boys who had been poorly treated by their step mother after their mother died. The twins were locked in the cellar with no toys and were often beaten. When found they had very poor social and intellectual abilities, but were later adopted and made great progress where they had above average intelligence and normal social relationships