Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

Question 1

What is his theory based on?

Answer 1

mother love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health. Being separated from a mother in early childhood has serious consequences (maternal deprivation).

Question 2

What is separation versus deprivation?

Answer 2

• important distinction to be made
• separation means the child not being in the presence of the primary attachment figure
• This only becomes a problem if the child becomes deprived of emotional care
• brief separations where the child is with a substitute caregiver is not as significant as they are also able to provide emotional care, but extended separations can lead to deprivation, which by definition causes harm

Question 3

What is the critical period?

Answer 3

• Bowlby saw the first two and a half years of life as a critical period for psychological development
• if a child is separated from their mother in the absence of suitable substitute care and so deprived of her emotional care for an extended duration during this critical period then psychological damage was inevitable
• he also believed there was a continuing risk up to the age of five

Question 4

What are the effects of maternal deprivation on development?

Answer 4

Intellectual development:
- delayed intellectual development, characterised by abnormally low IQ

Emotional development:
- Bowlby identified affection less psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or a strong emotion towards others
- this prevents a person developing normal relationships and is associated with criminality
- affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feelings of a victim and so lack remorse for their actions

Question 5

What was Bowlby’s research into maternal deprivation?

Answer 5

Bowlby’s research:
- 44 thieves study - exmained link between affection less psychopathy and maternal deprivation

Question 6

What was Bowlby’s procedure?

Answer 6

• sample consisted of 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
• all interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy - characterised by a lack of affection/guilt for their actions and a lack of empathy for their victims
• families also interviewed in order to establish whether the ‘thieves’ had prolonged early separations from their mothers
• the sample was compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal nit emotionally-disturbed young people

Question 7

What were Bowlby’s findings?

Answer 7

• found 14 out of 44 could be described at affection less psychopaths
• 12 of these 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
• only two participants in the control group of 44 had experienced long separations
  Bowlby concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy

Question 8

Evaluation for Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation?

Answer 8

Flawed evidence:
- 44 thieves study open to bias as all of it was conducted by bowlby (including the interviews)
- prejudice in terms of which teenagers he expected to show signs of psychopathy
- based his findings on another study which struggled due to confounding variables, which consisted of the children experiencing early trauma and institutional care as well as long separation from their primary caregivers
This means that Bowlby’s original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and would nit be taken seriously as evidence nowadays

Deprivation and privation:
- confusion between different types of early experience
- Rutter drew an important distinction between two types of early negative experience
- deprivation strictly refers to the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has develped
- on the other hand, privation is the failure t for any attachment in the first place - this may take place when children are brought up in institutional care
- Rutter found that what Bowlby classified as deprivation was actually privation during the 44 thieves study - distrupted early lives and may never have formed strong attachments
This means that Bowlby may have overestimated the seriousness of the effects of deprivation in children’s development

Critical versus sensitive periods:
- good aftercare can potentially prevent damage caused due to child not forming attachment in the first 2.5 years
- Koluchova (1976) - two Czech twins
- experienced physical and emotional abuse from 18 months until 7 years old
- they received excellent care and by their teens they had recovered fully even though they were damaged emotionally by their experiences
This means that lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation. The ‘critical period’ is therefore better seen as the ‘sensitive period’.

Conflicting evidence:
- most attempts to replicate the 44 thieves study failed to produce similar results
- they found no association between early separation and later psychopathology
- on the other hand, more recent research has shown that poor quality maternal care was associated with high rates of psychopathology in adults