Bowlbys Theory Of Maternal Deprivation Flashcards
Intro
John Bowlby is known for his monotropic theory of attachment. However, earlier in his career he also proposed the theory of maternal deprivation. This earlier theory focused on the idea that the continual presence of care from a mother or mother-substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies and toddlers, both emotionally and intellectually. Bowlby (1953) famously said that ‘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).
Separation vs deprivation
There is an important distinction to be made between separation and deprivation. Separation simply 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 (which can happen even if a mother is present and, say, depressed. Brief separations, particularly where the child is with a substitute caregiver who can provide emotional care, are not significant for development but extended separations can lead to deprivation, which by definition causes harm.
The critical period
Bowly 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 (Bowlby believed) psychological damage was inevitable. He also believed there was a continuing risk up to the age of five.
Effects on development
Intellectual development -One way in which maternal deprivation affects children’s development is their intellectual development. Bowly believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would experience delayed intellectual development, characterised by abnormally low IQ. This has been demonstrated in studies of adoption. For example, William Goldfarb (1947) found lower IQ in children who had remained in institutions as opposed to those who were fostered and thus had a higher standard of emotional care (see facing page for details of study).
Emotional development -A second major way in which being deprived of a mother figure’s emotional care affects children is in their emotional development. Bowlby identified affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others. This prevents a person developing fulfilling relationships and is associated with criminality. Affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feelings of victims and so lack remorse for their actions.
Bowlbys research
Bowlby’s (1944) 44 thieves study examined the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation.
Procedure -The sample in this study consisted of 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing.
All ‘thieves’ were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy: characterised as a lack of affection, lack of guilt about their actions and lack of empathy for their victims. Their families were 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 but emotionally disturbed young people.
Findings -Bowlby (1944) found that 14 of the 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths and 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives. In contrast only five of the remaining 30 ‘thieves’ had experienced separations. Only two participants in the control group of 44 had experienced long separations Bowly concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy.
Limitation- flawed evidence
One limitation of the theory of maternal deprivation is the poor quality of the evidence it is based on.
Bowly’s 44 thieves study (facing page) is flawed because it was Bowly himself who carried out both the family interviews and the assessments for affectionless psychopathy. This left him open to bias because he knew in advance which teenagers he expected to show signs of psychopathy. Other sources of evidence were equally flawed. For example, Bowly was also influenced by the findings of Goldfarb’s (1943) research on the development of deprived children in wartime orphanages. This study has problems of confounding variables because the children in Goldfarb’s study had experienced early trauma and institutional care as well as prolonged separation from their primary caregivers.
This means that Bowlby’s original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and would not be taken seriously as evidence nowadays.
Counterpoint -A new line of research has provided some modest support for the idea that maternal deprivation can have long-term effects. Frederic Lévy et al.
(2003) showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development though not other aspects of development.
This means that, although Bowlby relied on flawed evidence to support the theory of maternal deprivation, there are other sources of evidence for his ideas.
Limitation-deprivation and privation
Another limitation of Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation is his confusion between different types of early experience.
Michael Rutter (1981) 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 developed. On the other hand privation is the failure to form any attachment in the first place - this may take place when children are brought up in institutional care. Rutter pointed out that the severe long-term damage Bowlby associated with deprivation is actually more likely to be the result of privation. So the children studied by Goldfarb may actually have been ‘prived’ rather than deprived.
Similarly, many of the children in the 44 thieves study had disrupted early lives (e.g. spells in hospital) 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 period
A further limitation of the theory is Bowly’s idea of a critical period.
For Bowlby, damage was inevitable if a child had not formed an attachment in the first two-and-a-half years of life. Hence this is a critical period. However, there is evidence to suggest that in many cases good quality aftercare can prevent most or all of this damage. For example Jarmila Koluchová (1976) reported the case of the Czech Twins. The twins experienced very severe physical and emotional abuse from the age of 18 months up until they were seven years old. Although they were severely damaged emotionally by their experience they received excellent care and by their teens they had recovered fully.
This means that lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation. The critical period’ is therefore better seen as a ‘sensitive period’.
