Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory stuff

maternal deprivation theory

• Emotional and intellectual consequences of separation between a child and his/her mother (mother substitute too)

• Proposed that continuous care from a mother is essential for normal psychological development and prolonged separation from this adult causes serious damage to emotional and intellectual development

• Separation - child not being in the presence of the attachment figure

  • Short-term, brief separations are not damaging if the child is with a caregiver who can provide emotional care

• Deprivation - child being deprived of emotional care (can happen when mother is present, but not interactive)

• Importance of critical period in attachment - if this is not maintained, the implications are vast

  • Within the first 2-5 years, the child must not be deprived of emotional care

short-term separation

• Bowlby and Robertson (1952) found children show signs of distress when they experience a short-term separation from their primary attachment figure - divided this response into different stages of despair

• PDD model

  • Protest - child displays angry protest behaviours such as crying, screaming and clinging to the parent to prevent leaving

  • Despair - child appears calm on the surface when he stops protesting but instead withdraws and is upset, it usually rejects attempts by others to comfort them

  • Detachment - child begins to engage with others and rejects the caregiver when they return, exhibiting angry behaviour

• Institutionalisation - orphanages, foster care placements, hospitalisation

effects of deprivation

• Aggression

• Delinquency

• Dwarfism

• Intellectual disability

• Depression

• Dependency

• Affectionless Psychopathy

• Social maladjustment

intellectual/emotional development

• Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period, they would experience delayed intellectual development - shown by low IQ

• Golfarb 1947 studied 30 orphans up until the age of 12

• Half had been fostered by 4 months of age half had remained in the orphanage

• Assessed IQ at age 12 using the Stanford-Binet test

  • Fostered children - 96 IQ

  • Orphaned children - 68 IQ

 

• Spitz and Wolfe (1946) found that children who had been raised in orphanages showed more symptoms of depression than other children, seemingly supporting this deprivation hypothesis.

• However, not all research confirms Bowlby’s ideas.

  • Hodges and Tizard (1989) researched children from a children’s home who were either adopted or returned to their biological parents at the age of 4.

  • They found that it was actually the adopted parents who were better at forming attachments – rejecting Bowlby’s significance of the biological mother.

  • However, the institutionalised children still had long-term effects such as bullying, having fewer friends and fewer positive relationships with their siblings.

affectionless psychopathy

• Bowlby identified affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotions towards others - prevents a person developing fulfilling relationships and is associated with criminality - cannot appreciate the feelings of victims and lack remorse

• Bowlby concluded that maternal separation/deprivation in the child’s early life caused permanent emotional damage. He diagnosed this as a condition and called it Affectionless Psychopathy.

• According to Bowlby, this condition involves:

  • lack of emotional development

  • lack of concern for others

  • lack of guilt

  • inability to form meaningful and lasting relationships

key person approach

• Children are given a supplementary attachment figure whilst at nursery to act as a surrogate PCG, like a parent they should be sensitive to emotional and physical needs

• Before meeting the child, they should read personality profile of likes, dislikes and other things that are relevant to the child - allows for unique individualised approach and will allow the worker to provide emotional and physical comfort

• Child should be greeted by the person every morning and supported to say goodbye to the parent, and the key worker should be present when the child reunites with the parent to form a link

• Key workers like nurses could be on hand to help the child say goodbye to the parents to help ease the separation, this would reduce the negative impacts that separation from attachment figures can bring

• Should be a backup key person as well

 

• Identify several features of high-quality care based on research by Howes 1990

  • Lower number of children per caregiver is better

  • Staff should be well-qualified, trained, experienced and knowledgeable about child development and the importance of emotional care

  • Staff turnover should be low as possible, this has implications for owners as they must ensure they pay staff enough

  • Staff should be responsive and sensitive to children's emotional needs by responding quickly to pick up and comfort them and give plenty of attention

improving hospitalisation

• Robertson and Bowlby (1950) found that visits from parents to their children in hospital were greatly discouraged and there were few opportunities for parents to visit their children. Bowlby found that hospitalised children suffered emotional damage.

  • As a result of this, unrestricted visiting hours were put in place, and mothers were allowed to stay on hospital with their child. the parents are kept close by as much as possible, with hospital beds even made available at home so as to minimise the separation time.

• In times where this is not possible, steps can be taken to ensure there is accommodation available nearby for the parents, siblings and other figures of attachment.

  • It was also suggested that nursing staff should be better trained in understanding the emotional needs of children.

• Therefore, this implies that the best way to create an attachment friendly is to provide opportunities for parents to visit their children when they are exposed to unfamiliar new environments.

 

• Maximise family contact

  • As a direct outcome of Bowlby‘s research, the government-commissioned Platt Report (1959) this recommended that parents and children should no longer be separated at the hospital door. It has become standard practice since then for parents and children to stay with each other on hospital wards with flexible coming-and-going and no strict visiting hours.

  • More recently, charities have helped to extend this practice by building houses or rooms near to children’s hospitals around the UK. With this ‘rooming-in’, families can stay in close proximity and the bond between primary caregiver and child is maintained.

• Provide suitable substitute emotional care

  • This is a crucial requirement of temporary care (in a hospital or with a foster carer) and should be combined with steps taken to maximise contact with the primary caregiver in hospital.

  • Substitute carers should be sensitive and responsive to the child's emotional needs. They should maintain the child’s normal routines as much as possible, allow them to bring their own toys into the foster home, and where appropriate encourage them to talk openly about their mother. Other caregivers in the child's life (e.g. father, grandparents) should visit regularly to maintain an emotional connection to the family.