Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation:

• What is maternal deprivation?

  • Continual care from a mother, or mother substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies and toddlers, both emotionally and intellectually.
  • Bowlby argues 'mother-love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health'
  • Prolonged separation from this adult causes serious damage to emotional and intellectual development
• Separation vs Deprivation:

  • Separation: child is not in the presence of the attachment figure
  • Separation only becomes a problem if the child is deprived of emotional care. This then becomes deprivation.
  • Brief separation, particularly if the child is with an emotional careful substitute caregiver are not significant for development. Extended periods lead to deprivation which is harmful.
• what is a critical period?

  • Bowlby saw the first two and a half years of life as a critical period for psychological development
  • If a child is separated from their mother in the absence of suitable substitute care for an extended duration this critical period Bowlby believed psychological damage was inevitable
  • He also believed there was a continuing risk up to the age of five.
• What effects did Bowlby believe Maternal deprivation had on development?

  • Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would experience delayed intellectual development, evidenced by abnormally low IQ.
  • Goldfarb published evidence to support this from adoption studies, he followed 30 orphaned children to the age of 12
  • Half of the sample were fostered by the age of 12 and half remained in an orphanage
  • He found lower IQ in children who had remained in institutions (average 68, below the cut off point for intellectual disability) as opposed to those who were fostered (average 96) and had higher standards of emotional care
• Effects on development: Emotional development

  • Bowlby believes a second way in which being deprived of a mother figure's emotional care affects children is affectionless psychopathology
  • Bowlby identified affectionless psychopathalogy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion to each other
  • Affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feelings of victims and so lack remorse for their actions
  • This prevents a person developing fulfilling relationships and is associated with criminality
• What was Bowlby's procedure for the 44 thieves study?

  • 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
  • All thieves were interviewed for signs of affectionaless psychopathology (in this case lack of guilt about their actions and lack of empathy for their victims)
  • Their families were also interviewed to establish whether the 'thieves' had prolonged early separations from their mothers
  • The sample was compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people.
• What were the conclusions from Bowlby's study?

  • Bowlby found that 14 of the 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths and 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives
  • In contrast five of the remaining 30 'thieves' had experienced separations
  • Only two participants in the control group of 44 had experienced long separations
  • Bowlby concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy
• What is privation?

  A state where a child fails to form any kind of attachment to a primary caregiver.
• Limitation - Deprivation and privation

  P - A limitation of Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation is his confusion between different types of early experience

  E - Rutter drew an important distinction between two types of early negative experience. Deprivation strictly refers to the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed. Privation is the failure to form any attachment in the first place. Rutter argues the severe long-term damage Bowlby associated with deprivation is more likely to be the result of privation.

  E - The children studied by Goldfarb may have been 'prived' rather than deprived. Many of the 44 thieves had distributed early lives and may never have formed attachments

  L - This means that Bowlby may have overestimated the seriousness of the effects of deprivation in children's development
• Limitation - Critical vs sensitive period

  P - A limitation of Bowlby's theory is the idea of a critical period

  E - For Bowlby dame was inevitable if a child had not formed an attachment in the first two and half years of life. Hence this is the critical period. However, there is evidence to suggest that in many cases good quality aftercare can prevent most or all of this damage

  E - Koluchova's case study on Czech twins who experienced very severe physical and emotional abuse from the age of 18 months until they were 7 years old questions this. Although they were severely damaged emotionally, they received excellent care and by their teens had fully recovered.

  L - This means that lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation. The critical period is therefore better seen as a sensitive period.
• What is a limitation of Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation?

  Poor quality of the evidence
• Why is Bowlby's 44 thieves study considered flawed?

  Bowlby conducted both interviews and assessments
• How did Bowlby's involvement in the 44 thieves study introduce bias?

  He knew which teens he expected to show pathology
• What influence did Goldfarb's research have on Bowlby's findings?

  Bowlby was influenced by Goldfarb's findings on deprivation
• What confounding variables were present in Goldfarb's study?

  Children experienced early trauma and institutional care
• What is the implication of the flaws in Bowlby's evidence for maternal deprivation?

  His evidence is not taken seriously today
• Counterpoint:

  P - A new line of research has provided some modest support for the idea that maternal deprivation can have long-term effects

  E - Levy et al showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development through not other aspects of development

  L - This means that, although Bowlby relied on flawed evidence to support the theory of maternal deprivation, there are other sources for his idea.
• Limitation: Conflicting evidence

  P - A limitation of Bowlby's 44 thieves study is that most attempts to replicate the study have failed to produce similar results

  E - Hilda looked at 500 young people and found no association between early separation and later psychology

  E - On the other hand, more recent research (Gao et al) has partially supported Bowlby by showing that poor quality maternal care was associated with high rates of psychopathy in adults

  L - This questions the extent to which we should consider maternal deprivation as an explanation for abnormal social development.