Lesson 10 - Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

Question 1

Who proposed the theory of maternal deprivation?

Answer 1

Bowlby (1951)

Question 2

What is the theory of maternal deprivation?

Answer 2

• Nurturing from the mother/caregiver is vital in normal psychological development
• Separation is short periods of not being in the presence of the attachment figure
• Deprivation is separation to the extent that the infant loses an element of her care

Question 3

Effects of deprivation

Answer 3

Intellectual development

• Could suffer from a very low IQ. Goldfarb (1947) found that institutionalised children had much lower IQs then children who were fostered

Emotional development

• You could become an ‘affectionless psychopath’, meaning you have an inability to experience guilt and strong emotions for others and it associated with criminality. They do not feel remorse

Question 4

Bowlby (1944)

Answer 4

The 44 Juvenile Thieves study

• 44 teenagers who were accused of stealing were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy
• Their parents were also interviewed to find out whether they had prolonged separations as a child/if they were deprived
• A control group of emotionally disturbed teenagers who were not criminals were used to compare if they had also suffered maternal deprivation
• 14/44 (30%) of the thieves were described as affectionless psychopaths and of this 14, 12 (84%) experienced maternal deprivation during the critical period
• 30/44 were not AP, and only 5 of them experienced separations
• In the control group, only 2 of the 44 non-criminals had experienced maternal deprivation
• Therefore maternal deprivation is a cause of AP

Question 5

Weaknesses of the maternal deprivation hypothesis

Answer 5

• Bowlby used children who were orphaned during WW2, children growing up in poor quality orphanages and his own juvenile thieves study as evidence for this theory. Therefore this evidence is flawed as the war already had a huge traumatic and psychological impact on children, and this could already be the cause of AP instead of maternal deprivation. He also carried out the interviews in his study himself, therefore the study lacks internal validity as he may have shown investigator bias.
• Lewis (1954) replicated the juvenile thieves study and used 500 young people. She found that childhood separation from the mother did not predict criminality and therefore there could have been other factors may have affected the outcome of early separations
• Kulochova (1976) investigated a case of two twin boys who were locked in a cupboard from 18 months to 7 years of age. After this, they were looked after by two loving adults and they made a full recovery. Despite not making a strong attachment during the critical period, they made a full recovery showing that the effects of maternal deprivation are not inevitable and long lasting as Bowlby suggested
• Rutter (1981) claimed that there was a difference between deprivation which is losing an attachment figure after developing a bond and privation which is never developing one in the first place. He claimed that severe long term damage was a cause of privation

Question 6

Strengths of the maternal deprivation hypothesis

Answer 6

• The 44 Juvenile Thieves study by Bowlby (1944)
• Levy et al (2003) showed that separating baby rats from their mothers for as little as a day had permanent effects on their social development. There is truth in the MDH, but it is not as severe as Bowlby suggested