Maternal Deprivation – Bowlby

Continual presence of care from a mother or substitute is essential for normal psychological
development of babies emotionally and intellectually.

Attachments are commonly disrupted in situations when a child is put in day care, has
prolonged stays in hospital care or were put in institutional care to be separated from
abusive/ neglectful parents.
Privation – when a child fails to form any attachments at all, main cause is institutional care.

‘Mother love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins
and proteins for physical health’.

Separation vs deprivation

Separation – child not being in the presence of a primary attachment figure.

Deprivation – infants losing an element of care during the critical period. Prolonged
separation can lead to deprivation, causing problems with emotional and intellectual
development.

Critical period – 30 months for child development

Effects on development
 Intellectual development
- Delayed intellectual development, characterised by abnormally low IQ.
- 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.

- Emotional development
- Affectionless psychopathy > inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards
others.
- Prevents a person from developing normal relationships and is associated with
criminality.
- Cannot appreciate the feelings of victims so have no remorse.

Bowlby's research – 44 Thieves Study (1944)

Aim to examine the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation.

Procedure
- 44 thieves (teenagers) interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy.
- Their families were also interviewed to establish whether they had prolonged early
separations from their mothers.
- Sample was compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal but emotionally
disturbed young people.
Findings
 - 14 of the thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths and 12 of these
experienced prolonged separation from their mothers.
- Only 5 of the remaining 30 thieves had prolonged early separation.
- Only 2 participants in the control group had experienced long separation.

Conclusion
- Prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy.

EVALUATION

Limitations
- Flawed evidence
- Bowlby himself carried out the interviews, leaving him open to bias as he knew in
advance which teenagers, he expected to show signs of psychopathy.
- Bowlby used children who were orphaned in the 2nd world war. This study has
confounding variables as the children in his study experienced early trauma and
institutional care as well as prolonged separation.
- Bowlby’s original source of evidence has serious flaws and would not be taken
seriously as evidence.
- Counterpoint
- New line of research provided support that maternal deprivation has long term
effects.
- Fredric levy (2003) separating baby rats from their mothers for just a day had a
permanent effect on their social development.

- Deprivation and privation

- Confusion between different types of early experience
- Michael Rutter (1981) drew a distinction between two types of early negative
experience.
- Privation is the failure to form any attachment (when children are raised in
institutional care)
- Rutter stated the severe long term damage Bowlby discusses may be more relevant
to privation rather than deprivation.
- Bowlby may have overestimated the seriousness of deprivation in children
development.

- Critical vs sensitive periods

- Bowlby states damage is inevitable if a child has not formed an attachment in the
first 2 and a half years of life (critical period)
- There is evidence to suggest good quality aftercare can prevent most or all the
damage.
- Jamila Koluchova (1976) reported the case of the Zech twins.
- They experienced severe physical and emotional abuse from 18 months till 7 years
old.
 - They received excellent care and by their teens had recovered fully.
- Meaning lasting harm is not inevitable, the critical period is seen as a sensitive
period.

 Lewis (1954)
- Replicated Bowlby’s study on a larger scale with 500 participants.
- Found that prolonged separation from the mother did not predict criminality or
difficulty forming close relationships.
- Reducing validity of original findings

Advantages

- Supporting evidence from Harlow

- Found monkeys reared with a wire mother where more dysfunctional
- Those with a soft toy didn’t develop normal social behaviour.
- Maternally deprived monkeys were more aggressive, less sociable and bred less.
- However, Harlow's research can't be generalised to humans.
- Unethical study so lacks validity.