Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis

• Bowlby's prediction of what happens if an attachment is broken. Bowlby placed an important emphasis on maternal care and believed that infants and children need a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with a mother (OR a mother substitute for normal mental health).

  Frequent and/ or prolonged separations from the primary caergiver during the first 2.5 years will lead to irreversible consequences for the child. The risk can continue for up to 5 years.
• According to Bowlby some of the consequences of maternal deprivation are mental retardation (low IQ) and affectionless psychopathy (no guilt/remorse for crimes or hurting others)
• Maternal deprivation is the loss of emotional care provided by the main attachment figure. This can be due to hospital, death or divorce.
• Other effects include:

  • Aggression
  • Delinquency
  • Dwarfism
  • Intellectual retardation
  • Depression
  • Dependency
  • Affectionless
  • Social maladjustment
• Bowlby's 44 thieves study

  • worked as a psychotherapist as a child guidance clinic in London
  • was interested in the link between maternal deprivation and later emotional adjustment
  • used a sample of 44 thieves who had been referred to the clinic for stealing
  • compared to another 44 children who were not thieves but had eomtional difficulties
  • Bowlby interviewed the child and their mother about their early development
  • 14/44 thieves were classed as affectionless psychopaths
  • 12/14 that were classed had experienced frequent early separations from their mothers during the critical period
  • this supports the idea that early childhood separations lead to affectionless psychopathy
• A03

  Hilda Lewis partially replicated the thieves study on a larger scale and looked at 500 young people.

  In her sample a history of early prolonged early separation from the mother did not predict criminality or difficulty in forming close relationships.

  Thus suggesting that other factors may affect the outcome of maternal deprivation.
• A03

  Bowlby already had pre existing ideas about his theory of attachment which may have influenced his research findings. For e.g. he was influenced by findings of research into deprived children in orphanages. This evidence had confounding variables as they had experienced trauma and institutional care as well as prolonged separation.

  There are other factors that can influence juvenile delinquency such as poverty and so it may be that the consequences of maternal deprivation were overstated.
• A03

  Michael Rutter is a big critic of Bowlbly and feels that some of the effects are due to privation and not deprivation. He feels that Bowlby failed to distinguish between them.
• A03

  Bowlby's research has had a massive impact on social care policy and when children are going to experience separation from their primary caregiver bond disruption can be minimised by providing good emotional care as a substitute.