Maternal Deprivation

• Maternal Deprivation is the long-term separation or loss of emotional care from the mother/mother substitute
• Maternal Deprivation can lead to low IQ and affectionless psychopathy
• The critical period for attachment is approximately 2.5 years
• Separation is when the child is not in the presence of the PAF - brief separations do not have a significant impact on development
• Deprivation is where the child loses an element of the PAF's emotional care/love - this becomes an issue for development
• Privation is failure to form an attachment in the first place
• Bowlby's 44 thieves experiment used 44 criminal teenagers from London accused of stealing
• Bowlby interviewed the 'thieves' for signs of affectionless psychopathy and interviewed their families to establish whether they had prolonged separation from their mothers
• Affectionless Pychopathy is the inability to experience guilt or strong emotions for others, preventing the person from developing normal relationships
• Bowlby used a control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed youths
• Bowlby found that 86% of affectionless thieves experienced frequent separations before age 2, compared to 17% normal thieves and 4% controls
• Bowlby concluded that maternal deprivation is linked to criminality, and perhaps emotionless psychopathy
• Bowlby's 44 thieves has low ecological validity as London has very high crime rates
• Bowlby's 44 thieves is gender biased as it was all boys and may be researcher bias as Bowlby chose the participants
• Bowlby's 44 thieves had real-world application as it led to major social change in childrens' hospital care e.g parental visits