Bowlby's Maternal Deprivation

• Bowlby claims if monotropy is disturbed, deprivation has negative and irreversable concequences
• Concequences of Maternal Deprivation:

  • Social - Delinquency: behaviour outside of acceptable norms
  • Emotional - Affectionless Psychopathy: unable to show caring behaviours
  • Intellectual - Low IQ: lower cognitive ability
• Continuity Hypothesis


  Deprivation causes the Internal Working Model to be faulty, leading to unsuccessful relationships
• (+) A03: Bowlby (1944)


  44 Child Thieves and a control group were assessed for affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation

  • Found that 14 children had affectionless psychopathy, of which 12 children were maternally deprivated
  • Only 3 children that werent diagnosed with AP had been maternally deprivated
  • Only 2 children in control had experienced prolonged seperation
• (-) A03: Correlation

  Cannot create a causation, may be a 3rd factor affecting delinquency e.g. low income
• (-) A03: Alpha Bias


  Alpha Bias of the mother exaggurating her importance, disregards the father of risk-taking behaviours, social development and sensitive responsiveness; this can lead to psychological harm of mother believing her actions caused this