Maternal deprivation

• Separation - child away from attachment figure for brief periods of time, has no long term consequences.

  Deprivation - child away from attachment figure for prolonged time, long term consequences
• Effects of deprivation

  • Reduced intelligence
  • Delinquency
  • Aggression
  • Depression
  • Relationship difficulties
  • Affectionless psychopathy
• Affectionless psychopathy - inability to experience guilt or strong emotion for others. Difficulty forming normal relationships
• A strength of bowlbys theory of maternal deprivation is its research support from a rat study about the long term effects of maternal deprivation.
• A weakness of bowlbys theory of maternal deprivation is that not all research supports it. Hilda Lewis [1954] recreated the 44 thieves study with 500 young people, and could not find a correlation with separation from the mother and criminality
• A weakness of bowlbys theory of maternal deprivation is the deign flaws for the 44 thieves study. Bowlby did the affectionless psychopathy tests himself, knowing the results he wanted [ researcher bias ]
• The 44 thieves study [ bowlby, 1944 ] looked at 44 teenage criminals. They were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy. Their families were interviewed about prolonged separation in the early years.

  A control group of 44 non criminal teenagers was also used.
• The findings of the 44 thrives study:

  14 / 44 thieves had affectionless psychopathy.

  Of that 14, 12 has prolonged speciation in early life

  The control only had 2 / 44 experience prolonged separation in early life
• The 44 thieves study [ 1944 ] concluded that maternal deprivation significantly increases the chances of a child developing affectionless psychopathy