Maternal deprivation

• Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation (1953):

  Attachment is essential for healthy psychological and emotional development. It states that there will be many negative consequences of maternal deprivation such as:

  • Inability to form attachments in the future.
  • Affectionless psychopathy (unable to feel remorse).
  • Delinquency (behavioural problem's in teenage years).
  • Problems with cognitive development.
• Attachments are disrupted when a child is out in day care, has prolonged hospital stays or were put into institutional care to be separated from parents. This can have temporary or permanent affects on the child.

  
  

  Privation is when a child fails to form an attachments at all. This is more harmful for the child. One of the most common cause for this has been institutional care.
• Investigation into maternal deprivation:

  • Bowlby conducted a study (44 juvenile thieves). He found that out of the 44 thieves, 14 displayed signs of affectionless psychopathy and 12 had suffered from maternal deprivation during the critical period. This was compared to 5 affectionless psychopaths in the remaining 30 thieves. Therefore, Bowlby believed that early maternal deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy and consequently criminality.
• Limitations of maternal deprivation:

  • Limited explanation - Lewis et al disagreed with Bowlby's conclusion that maternal deprivation and affectionless psychopathy could lead to criminality. He collected qualitative data from interviews with 500 juveniles and found no link between maternal deprivation and difficulty in forming relationships later in life. This suggests Bowlby may have made incorrect casual conclusions.
• Limitations of maternal deprivation:

  • Researcher bias - Bowlby’s 44 juvenile thieves study suffers from several methodological limitations. Bowlby was aware of what he wanted to find and so may have used leading questions. He also based his theory 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.
• Limitations of maternal deprivation:

  • Limited explanation - 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, 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.
• Strengths of maternal deprivation:

  • Real life application - Bowlby's work led to improvements in policies related to child welfare (eg visiting time for mothers in hospitals and length of time for maternity leave).