Maternal deprivation

• Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory


  Mother love in infancy is as important in mental health as vitamins and proteins are for physical health. Being separated from a mother in childhood can lead to serious consequences
• Separation


  a child not being in the presence of a primary attachment figure
• Deprivation


  infants losing an element of care. Prolonged separation can lead to privation
• critical period for maternal deprivation


  30 months. If the child is deprived of mother's emotional care for an extended period during the critical period the child will have psychological damage.
• intellectually development for maternally deprived children


  low IQ. Goldfarb 1947 children who had remained in institutions had a lower IQ than those fostered as they had a higher standard of emotional care
• Affectionless psychopathology


  inability to experience guilt or strong emotions for others. This prevents the person from forming normal relationships and is associated with criminality. They can't appreciate feelings for victims and therefore have no remorse.
• Bowlby's 44 thieves study


  44 teenage 'thieves' were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathology. Their families were interviewed in order to establish whether the 'thieves' had prologues early separation from mothers. A control group of non-criminals but emotionally disturbed young people was set up to see how often maternal separation/ deprivation occurred in children who were not thieves. Bowlby found that 14/44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths. Of this 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation form their mothers in their critical period. This shows failing to form an attachment can lead to affectionless psychopathology.
• bowlby's maternal deprivation theory evaluation

  + supporting evidence from Levy et al who separated rats from their mothers for as little as a day and it had permanent effect on their development

  -critical period is more of a sensitive period

  -some people genetically have a low IQ but have not experienced maternal deprivation

  -Bowlby confused deprivation and privation. E.g. Michael Rutter claimed that when Bowlby talks of 'deprivation', he had mixed up deprivation (loss of primary attachment figure after attachment had developed) and privation (failure to form any attachment in the first place). Rutter claimed that severe long-term damage Bowlby associated with deprivation is actually more likely to be the result of privation.