Bowlby's Theory of Maternal Deprivation
Cards (6)
- separation vs deprivation
- separation - the child is not in the presence of the primary caregiver, brief separations, particularly when the child is with a substitute caregiver, don't have a significant impact on development
- deprivation - the child loses an element of the primary attachment figure's emotional care/love, this then becomes an issue for development
- extended separations can lead to deprivation, which causes harm
- Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis
- the crucial time for a child's psychological development is 30 months
- if a child is deprived from their mother during this time, it can lead to serious psychological harm
- 44 thieves - procedure
- Bowlby selected a sample of cases from the many children he had worked with at his clinic in London
- he identified 44 thieves (14 of which were classed as psychopaths) and 44 non-thieves for comparison
- he recorded the number who had experienced frequent sepearations from their mother before aged 2
- 44 thieves - findings
- 86% of affectionless thieves experienced frequent separations before age 2, compared with 17% of other theives and 4% of controls
- 44 theives - conclusions
- maternal deprivation is linked to criminality and perhaps to emotionless psychopathy
- evaluation
- generalisable as it supports his maternal deprivation theory
- could hinder his results as it is his own research supporting his own theory so it may be bias as he may have interpreted his results differently (researcher bias) - lacks internal validity
- Levy et al supported this as he found that when baby rats were separated from their mothers for even just a day, this had a permanent impact on the social development - supporting Bowlby (external validity)
- Bowlby's study had a positive impact on how people thought about childrearing post war - Robertson filmed a two year old girl during her 9 day stay in a hospital and found that she was frequently distressed and begging for her mother - high external validity