Bowlby’s Theory of Maternal Deprivation AO3

• Deprivation & privation 1/2

  -One limitation of BTMD ; his confusion between different types of early experience. Rutter drew an important distinction between two types of early negative experience. Deprivation strictly refers to the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed. Privation is the failure to form an attachment; this can happen in institutinal care. Rutter pointed out that the severe long term damage Bowly associated with deprivation is more likely to be the result of privation.
• Deprivation & privation 2/2

  -So the children studied in Goldfarbs research may’ve been prived, not deprived. Similarly, many of the children in the 44 thieves study had disrupted early lives and may never have formed strong attachments. This means that Bowlby may've overestimated the seriousness of the effects of deprivation in children's development.
• Critical vs sensitive periods 1/2

  -One limitation of BTMD; is the idea of a critical period. Bowlby believed damage was inevitable if a child hadn’t formed an attachment in the first 2 years of life: critical period. Evidence suggests that in many cases good quality aftercare can prevent most or all of this damage. Koluchova reported the case of the Czech twins; they experienced severe physical and emotional abuse from 18 months - 7 years old.
• Critical vs sensitive periods 2/2

  Although the twins were damaged emotionally by the experience, they received excellent care and they had recovered fully by the time they were teens. This means that lasting harm isn't inevitable even in cases of severe privation. The 'critical period‘ is therefore seen as a sensitive period.
• Flawed evidence 1/2

  -One limitation of BTMD; the poor quality of the evidence its based on. Bowlby’s 44 thieves study is flawed; it was Bowlby himself who carried out the family interviews and the assessments for affectionless psychopathy. Since he knew in advance which teenagers he expected to show signs of psycopathy, he was open to bias.
• Flawed evidence 2/2

  -Other evidence was equally flawed: Bowlby influenced the findings of Goldfarbs research on the development of deprived children in wartime orphanages, the children in Goldfarb's study experienced early trauma and institutional care as well as prolonged separation from their primary caregivers which leaves the study with confounding variables. This means that Bowlby's original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and wouldn't be taken as evidence today.
• -+A new line of research has provided sufficient support for the idea that maternal deprivation can have long term effects. Levy showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development, though not other aspects of development. This means that even though Bowlby relied on flawed evidence to support the theory of maternal deprivation, there are other sources of evidence for his ideas.