theory of maternal deprivation

• It was assumed that a good standard of food and physical care was rhe key importance of good care. No one really considered the long-term effects of separation. Bowlby believed that this wasn’t enough and infants and children needed a warm intimate and continuous relationship with a mother or a substitute. ‘Mother-love in infancy is as important as vitamin’s to physical health.’
• Bowlby analysed case histories of patients in his clinic. He studied 88 of them, 44 caught stealing. Bowlby suggested some of these were ‘affectionless psychopaths’ as they lacked normal signs of affection and empathy. They could steal from others as it didn’t matter. The ‘affectionless thieves’ had experienced frequent separations from their mothers. 86% of them had separations compared to 17% of other thieves. Almost none of the control participants had experienced separations, 39% of the thieves had. These findings suggests that separations can link to affectionless psychopathy.
• Bowlby suggested these are long term impacts and others such as depression can have an effect. Bowlby suggested the separation will only have an effect is this happens before the age of 2 and a half years if there is no mother substitute available. Bowlby also suggested that there was a continuing risk up to 5 years. It can be avoided if there is a mother substitute, however if there isn’t these effects can last long term.
• When discussing deprivation, many people assume that its physical separation that’s the cause, but it could also be emotional separation.

  For example, a mother may be physically present, but not emotionally unavailable, thus the child does not get the care they need. A study of mothers was done. Those who had mothers that were severely depressed, 55% of them were insecurely attached compared to the control group with non-depressed mothers that only had 29% insecurely attached.

  This shows that emotional separation also has an impact leading to deprivation.
• A huge benefit of Bowlby’s research was the real-world application.

  Before his research, children were separated from their parents when they spent time in hospital. Visiting was discouraged or forbidden. One of Bowlby’s colleagues filmed a girl in hospital who was frequently distressed and was begging to go home, which helped show the issues of separation.

  This work led to a big change of how children were cared for in hospitals which was beneficial for many children’s lives.
• Research has shown individual differences in emotional disruption.

  Bowlby created a study of 60 children under the age of 4 who were being treated for TB. During prolonged stays in hospitals, they were only visited once a week and so experienced prolonged early disruption of attachment. When assessed in adolescence, some children in the TB group were more maladjusted (63%) than ‘normal children’.

  Bowlby suggested that those children who coped better may have been more securely attached and so, more resilient. Therefore there are individual differences when it comes to effects of deprivation.
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  Rutter criticised Bowlby’s view of deprivation.

  Rutter claimed that Bowlby didn’t make it clear whether the child’s attachment bond had been formed, but then broken, or just hadn’t formed at all. The lack of a bond would be much more detrimental to the child then a loss of a bond. Therefore he used the term ‘privation’ to refer to when the child fails to develop an attachment bond, and deprivation when it is lost.