Maternal Deprivation

• Bowlby's (1953) Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis- continuous relationship with a mother figure is necessary for healthy emotional development
• Consequences of maternal deprivation:

  • Inability to form future attachments- due to a negative internal working model
  • Affectionless psychopathy- inability to feel remorse
  • Delinquency- behavioural issues in adolescence
  • Problems with cognitive development
• Bowlby 44 Thieves study (1944):

  • 44 thieves and 44 non-thieves (both groups from a delinquency centre) were interviewed and answered questionnaires
  • 14/44 of the thieves could be described as being affectionless psychopaths
  • 12/14 of the affectionless psychopaths had experienced early prolonged separation from their mothers before the age of 5
  • This suggests that prolonged separation from mothers early in life is linked to affectionless psychopathy
• Evaluation of Bowlby's 44 Thieves Study:

  • Application- encourages more stability in childcare by assigning children specific caregivers, more financial support for young families (through maternal and paternal leave) to support early attachment
  • Low internal validity- use of retrospective recall means that their results might be inaccurate, less reliable. Also social desirability bias lowers reliability
  • Conclusions provide a correlation between early separation and delinquency- issue of third, untested variable which causes the relationship, low reliability of results
• Institutionalisation- relates to living in an institutional setting (hospital or orphanage), where individuals live long-term and receive little emotional care
• Rutter et al (2011):

  • Longitudinal study on 165 Romanian orphans adopted into British families
  • 4 groups- children under 6 months, children between 6 months and 2 years, children over 2 years, British adoptees as a control group
  • Each group assessed at a range of ages
  • At the start of the study, Romanian orphans had lower IQs than the control group and delayed development
• Findings of Rutter et al:

  • Age 6- those adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment
  • Age 11- 54% of the children who showed disinhibited attachment still showed this attachment style
  • Traits of disinhibited attachment- attention-seeking, clinginess
  • Age of adoption was a key factor in attachment type- adopted before 6 months= secure attachment, adopted after 6 months= disinhibited attachment. By age 11 = difference in IQ score between the two groups
• Conclusions of Rutter:

  • Adoption after the first 6 months at life causes longer lasting effects of institutionalisation
  • Recovery is possible if the child can form attachments- they might have slower development rather than permanent damage
  • Challenges Maternal Deprivation Theory- Rutter shows that recovery is possible
  • Recovery can be made if adoptees are adopted by sensitive parents
• Evaluation of Effects of Institutionalisation:

  • Application- research caused policy changes in care homes to benefit children emotionally (one or two key workers)
  • High internal validity- Romanian orphanages allowed cause and effect to be directly studied as it is more ethical than normal circumstances
  • Lack of adult data on how the orphans developed- less certainty around the conclusions of the study
  • Low external validity- harmful effects could be because of the extreme lack of care, rather than institutional care in general, so it cannot be generalised