Evaluation

• Real world application

  Bowlby and Robertson found that children were distressed when left alone (especially overnight) in hospitals. Bowlby's research has changed the way that hospitals work so now mothers can stay/sleep with their child.
• Bifulco et al


  One strength of Bowlby's research is that there is evidence from other researchers that supports his claims. Bifulco studied 250 women who had lost their mothers before the age of 17. He found that the risk of depressive or anxiety disorders had doubled and that the rate of depression was highest in those who lost their mothers before the age of 6.
• Ernst

  He studied 137 Swiss children and found that Bowlby's findings on emotional development were indeed true. However, when he studied for intellectual development, he instead found that his research contradicted that of Bowlby's. He found that the IQs of children who had suffered from maternal deprivation didn't differ widely from those that hadn't.
• Deprivation and privation

  A limitation of Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation is his confusion between different types of early attachment. Michael Rutter claims that deprivation is the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed, whereas privation is the failure to form any attachment in the first place. Many of the children in the 44 thieves study had disrupted early lives and may had never formed an attachment. Rutter claims that Bowlby overestimated the seriousness of deprivation.
• Flawed evidence

  A limitation of the theory of maternal deprivation is the poor quality of the evidence that it is based on. Bowlby used his own research to support his theory. This leaves his research open to bias as he knew in advance which teenagers he expected to show signs of psychopathy. Goldfarb's research was also flawed due to confounding variables as the children in the study had experienced early trauma and prolonged separation their primary caregivers.