Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

Bowlby’s theory

Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation focused on the idea that the continual presence of care from a mother or mother substitute is essential for normal psychological development in babies/toddlers

Separation vs deprivation

Separation simply means the child is not in the presence of the primary attachment figure. Brief separations, particularly when the child is with a substitute caregiver who can provide emotional care are not significant for development

Separation becomes a problem if the child becomes deprived of emotional care ,extended separations can lead to deprivation, which causes harm

The critical period

Bowlby saw the first 2 years and a half of life as the critical period for psychological development.

If the child is separated from the mother and deprived of emotional care during this period, then Bowlby believed the psychological damage was inevitable

Effects on development

• intellectual development - Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period, they would experience delayed intellectual development, characterised by an abnormally low IQ. Golffarb(1947) found lower IQ in children who had ransomed in institutions as opposed to those who were fostered

• Emotional development - Bowlby believed that being deprived of a mother figure’s emotional care affects emotional development. He identified affection less psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotions for others, this prevented them from forming normal relationships

Bowlby’s research - procedure

Bowlby’s (1944) 44 thieves study examined the link between affection less psychopathy and maternal deprivation

PROCEDURE

• the sample consisted of 44 criminal teenagers (thieves)

• All thieves were interviewed for signs of affection less psychopathy : lack of guilt, affection and empathy

• 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 (44 emotionally disturbed young people)

Bowlby’s research - finding

• bowlby found that 14 of the 44 thieves were affection-less psychopaths - 12 of these 14 has experienced prolonged separations from their mother during the critical period

• Only 5 of the remaining 30 had experienced separations

• Only 2 of 44 participants in the control group experienced separations

Limitations

• one limitation is the poor quality of the evidence it is based - Bowlby’s 44 thieves study is flawed because it was Bowlby himself who carried out both the family interviews and the assessments for affection less psychopathy. This left him open to bias because he knew which teenagers he expected to show sights of psychopathy. This means his study has serious flaws

• One limitation is Bowlby’s idea of a critical period - for Bowlby, damage was inevitable if a child had not formed an attachment in the first 30 months of life, however the case of the Czech Twins shows that good quality after care can prevent the damage. The twins experienced very severe physical and emotional abuse from the age of 18 months to 7 years old. Although they were severely damaged , they then received excellent care and by their teens they had fully recovered

Strengths

• one strength is the support for the idea that mental deprivation can have a long-term effect. Levy(2003) showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development but no other aspects of development