bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

• bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation: if the child's monotropic attachment is disrupted during the critical period due to prolonged separation from the mother, this deprivation has negative and irreversible consequences
• critical period: an infant's first 30 months (2 and a half years). however there is a risk of up to 5 years
• social development: delinquency: behaviour is often outside acceptable norms, such as committing petty crime
• emotional development: affectionless psychopathy: children are unable to show caring behaviour to others or empathy for other people's feelings and have little guilt for their harmful actions
• intellectual development: low IQ: cognitive abilities are lower than peers
• continuity hypothesis: deprivation affects the infant's internal working model, leading to unsuccessful relationships
• bowlby's 44 thieves study, 44 child thieves and a control group were assessed for affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation. found 14 thieves had affectionless psychopathy, 12 maternal deprivation
• bowlby's research is correlational; deprivation and delinquency could be linked to a third factor, such as extreme poverty or contact with criminal relatives
• bowlby's work on attachment led to significant positive changes to policies related to child welfare, such as visiting time for mothers in hospitals, the ratio of carers and infants at nursery school and the length of maternity leave
• monotropy may exaggerate the importance of the mother as a primary caregiver (alpha bias), underestimating the role of the father in encouraging risk-taking, developing socialisation and taking on a sensitive responsive role