Bowlby maternal deprivation

• what is maternal deprivation

  • the emotional and intellectual consequences of separation between baby and their mother.
  • Bowlby said that continuous care from a mother is essential for normal psychological development
  • the prolonged separation from an adult causes serious damage to the emotional and intellectual development
• what is the critical period

  • 2 and a half years
  • if the child was deprived of the mothers care, then psychological damage was inevitable + irreversible
• what is the intellectual effect on development


  • abnormally low IQ
  • suffer mental retardation
  • this has been supported by studies of adoption.
• what is the emotional effect on development


  • affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotions towards others.
  • this prevent a person developing normal relationships and lack remorse for their actions.
• what was bowlbys research procedure

  • 44 thieves study.
  • they were interview based on their affectionless psychopathy
  • compared to a control group of 44 non criminal, but emotionally disturbed young people
• what was Bowlby's research findings

  • 14/44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths
  • 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first 2 years of their life.
  • only 2 ppts in the control group had experienced long separations
• What did Golfarb find about intellectual effect on development

  children that had low IQ were in institutions
• research bias in the 44 thieves study


  • Bowlby carried out the research himself in this study
  • therefore creates research bias as Bowlby
  • intended to find a link between separation and being deviant.
  • lowering the validity
• support from animal studies


  • Harlow found that when the monkeys were separated from their mothers
  • they formed aggressive and anti social behaviour.
  • showing that material deprivation does have an effect on behaviour
• small sample size


  • Bowlby only used 44 teenagers in his experiment
  • this is not enough for us to be able to generalise these finding to the rest of the UK let alone other countries.
  • making it not generalisable