Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Theory

• Maternal deprivation


  Lack of continuous presence of care, comfort and love from primary caregiver (mother)
• Maternal Deprivation leads to..


  • An inability to form attachments in the future (see the Internal Working Model)
  • Affectionless psychopathy (being unable to feel remorse)
  • Delinquency (behavioural problems in the child's teenage years)
  • Problems with cognitive (brain) development
• Privation is when a child fails to form any attachments at all.
• Separation is not deprivation 


  Attachments are commonly disrupted in situations when a child is put in day care, has prolonged stays in hospital care or were put in institutional care to be separated from abusivel neglectful or unintentionally absent parents. This can have temporary effects on the child, or permanent but fairly mild harm.
• Bowlby‘s 44 thieves studies 


  Interviews 44 teens, who was accused of steeling.

  They were interviewed about affectionless psycopathy and its characteristics

  Families where ask about maternal deprivation

  Control group : Disturbed teens, non-criminal- same interviews were done
• What were his findings 


  31.8% of experimental group were affectionless psychopath. (14 thieves)

  27.3% had experience maternal deprivation (12 thieves) during sensitive period

  Only 5 in control Group were afffectionless psychopaths
• Conclusion

  Bowlby believed that early maternal deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy and consequently, criminality!
• Effects on development: Intellectual 


  Deprevation leads to mental retardation - very low IQ

  Golbfarb - lower IQ children remained low if they remained in an institution compared to those who where adopted
• Effects on development: Emotional 


  Deprivation leads to affectionless psychopathy- difficulties feeling remorse/ empathy

  This is associated with criminality as there is not guilt barrier stopping them
• Counter evidence 


  Lewis et al disagreed with Bowlby's conclusion that affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation caused criminality. Through collecting qualitative data from interviews conducted with 500 juveniles, the researchers found no link between maternal deprivation and a difficulty in forming relationships in later life. This suggests that Bowlby may have made incorrect causal conclusions.

  Other factors might be at play
• Flawed Methodology 


  One of these includes researcher bias - Bowlby was aware of what he wanted to find and so may have phrased the interview questions in a way which influenced the respondents to reply in a certain way i.e. leading questions.

  Secondly, Bowlby also based his theory of maternal deprivation from interviews collected from war-orphans. This does not control for the confounding variable of poor quality care in orphanages or post-traumatic stress disorder, which may have had a larger influence on the children's development rather than simply maternal deprivation.
• The effects of the critical period may not be as concrete as Bowlby originally believed. For example, the case of two twins locked away in cupboards in Czechoslovakia for the first 7 years of their lives was reported by Koluchova. Despite the obvious trauma and maternal deprivation which occurred for an extended period of time, even exceeding the critical period, the researchers found that with appropriate fostering, the twins made a full psychological recovery.

  Therefore, the effects of maternal deprivation are not always so clear-cut.
• Supporting evidence 


  Levy et al found that seperating infant rats from mom for as little as a day had permanent effects on development

  However, rats are not human and only looks at social developmen, not intelligence and emotional.

  this supports the theory