bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

• Applying Strange Situation procedures and behavioural categories is ethnocentric
• Cross-cultural research using the Strange Situation judges and categorises infant behaviour according to behavioural categories that were developed following observations of middle-class American infants
• This means that when researchers interpret non-American infant behaviour, it is being judged against an American standard
• Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

  Proposes that the continual presence of nurture from a mother or mother-substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies and toddlers, both emotionally and intellectually
• Separation


  Child not being in the presence of the primary attachment figure
• Deprivation


  Child loses an element of the mother's care
• Brief separation, particularly where the child is with a substitute caregiver, are not significant for development but extended separations can lead to deprivation, which by definition causes harm
• Critical period


  First 30 months or 2.5 years of life, according to Bowlby
• Effects of maternal deprivation

  • Delayed intellectual development characterised by abnormally low IQ
  • Affectionless psychopathy - inability to experience guilt or strong emotion for others, preventing normal relationships and associated with criminality
• Bowlby's 44 Thieves Study (1944)


  1. Interviewed 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing to assess for signs of affectionless psychopathy

  2. Interviewed their families to establish whether the 'thieves' had prolonged early separation from their mothers

  3. Set up a control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people
• Bowlby found that 14 of 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths, and 12 of the 44 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives
• In contrast, only 5 of the remaining 30 'thieves' had experienced separations, and only 2 of the 44 control group had experienced long separations
• It was concluded that prolonged separation/deprivation causes affectionless psychopathy
• Evaluation of Bowlby's 44 Thieves Study

  • Generalisability
  • Reliability and Validity
  • Replicability
  • Bias
  • Psychodynamic Reductionism
• Bowlby's participants were not a representative group because they constituted a small opportunity sample recruited from a single child guidance clinic in London. The results may not generalise well from the 1930s and 1940s to the twenty-first century because criminality, child-rearing and attitudes to childhood in general have all changed greatly in the intervening decades
• Bowlby and his team had to assess criminality, IQ, early developmental history and psychopathic tendencies. However, they only had access to a direct measure of criminality. IQ tests lacked reliability and validity in the 1940s. Early experience had to be assessed by interviews with parents, relying on their honesty and the accuracy of their recall. Psychopathic tendencies were assessed by interview, for which a set of standard questions were not established at the time. Therefore there were problems with reliability and validity of most of the measures used in the study
• A gold standard for a good scientific study is that it can be replicated, and that independent replications produce similar findings. Too much has changed to replicate the 44 thieves study meaningfully today, but it is worth looking at a related study from the same period. Lewis (1954) carried out a partial replication of Bowlby's study with a much larger sample and found no relationship between early separation and later criminality
• This is not to suggest that Bowlby deliberately biased his results. However, he was aware of each child's developmental history when he assessed their psychopathy status, so he may have unconsciously interpreted things they said in the light of what he wished to find. It is now standard procedure to ensure that researchers are blind to details like this, which might influence their judgement
• Bowlby's central ideas that some types of early experiences of emotional trauma are risk factors for later criminality and lack of empathy have some support from modern research. However, Bowlby focused exclusively on these psychodynamic factors and underplayed other influences on development, for example poverty. Criminality and psychopathic behaviour are complex phenomena with many causal factors
• Bowlby drew on a number of sources of evidence for maternal deprivation including studies of children orphaned during the Second World War (Goldfarb et al., 1955), those growing up in poor quality orphanages, and of course his 44 thieves study. However, there are all flawed as evidence. War-orphans were traumatised and often had poor after-care, therefore these factors may have caused later developmental difficulties rather than separation. Similarly, children growing up from birth in poor quality institutions were deprived of many aspects of care, not just maternal care. Furthermore, the 44 thieves study had some major design flaws, most importantly bias; Bowlby himself carried out the assessments for affectionless psychopathy and the family interviews, knowing what he hoped to find
• Hilda Lewis (1954) partially replicated the 44 thieves study on a larger scale, looking at 500 young people. In her sample a history of early prolonged separation from the mother did not predict criminality or difficulty forming close relationships
• Bowlby used the term 'critical period' because he believed that prolonged separation inevitably caused damage if it took place within that period. However, later research has shown that damage is not inevitable. Some cases of very severe deprivation have had good outcomes provided the child has some social interaction and good aftercare. For example, Koluchova (1976) reported the case of twin boys from Czechoslovakia who were isolated from the age of 19 months until they were seven years old (their step-mother kept them locked in a cupboard). Subsequently they were looked after by two loving adults and appeared to recover fully
• Levy et al. (2003) showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect of their social development though not other aspects of development
• Rutter (1981) claimed that, when Bowlby talked of 'deprivation', he was muddling two concepts together. Rutter drew a distinction between deprivation, which really means the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has development whereas privation is the failure to form any attachment in the first place. Rutter claimed that the sever long-term damage Bowlby associated with deprivation is more likely the result of privation