BOWLBY'S THEORY OF MATERNAL DEPRIVATION

Bowlby

  • He states that any separation from the mother or PCG has irreversible social, emotional + cognitive consequences
  • Continual presence from a mother/mother substitute is needed for normal psychological development of an infant
  • He also stated that if a child is separated from the mother/substitute care giver + deprived of emotional care for an extended period during the critical period, then psychological damage is inevitable
  • If suitable substitute emotional care is provided, then the negative effects may be avoided

Critical period, internal working model, emotional development/affectionless psychopaths

  • E.g. intellectual + emotional development can be affected by prolonged absence of maternal love
  • Intellectual under development refers to low IQ + possible mental retardation
  • Bowlby - time away from the mother during the critical period (2.5 years) affects the development of a positive internal working model + infants will not develop a positive framework to form relationships with others in the future
  • Goldfarb - found a lower IQ in children who stayed in institutions compared to those who got adopted
  • Emotional development refers to individuals developing into affectionless psychopaths, characterised by no empathy, inability to experience guilt or strong emotion or others
  • Bowlby stated that seperation of maternal love during infancy can have long term impacts into adulthood e.g. can affect their ability to parent + form romantic relationships (continuity hypothesis)

Bowlby's theory = real world benefits + application of this theory

Supporting Study - Bowlby's 44 thieves

Contradicting study - Rutter's Romanian orphans study

Bowlby himself conducted the assessment for affectionless psychopaths

  • Found that 14/44 thieves were affectionless psychopaths and of these 14 12 had experienced prolonged early separation from mother before the age of 5 - a sensitive period for development
  • This shows that prolonged early sepeartion from mother caused affectionless psychopathy
  • This suggests that there may have been interviewer bias
  • Bowlby knew what he hoped to find in this study andthis may have impacted the results
  • This questions the validity of the evidence supporting the maternal deprivation hypothesis
  • Rutter found that the orphans who were deprived of maternal love went on to have cognitive (lower IQ) and attachment issues (more likely to have dis-inhibited attachment) - if adopted early enough they could recover from these negative effects
  • Bowlby's research showed the importance of positive attachment experienced + prevented prolonged separation in the first 5 years
  • This has led to major social change in the way that children are cared for in hospitals with parental visits + stays - now being the norms so children can remain in contact with their parents
  • The implications are even further widespread as some national governments offer more financial support for young families in terms of maternity + paternity leave - e.g. Sweden offers 480 days parental leave, clearly highlighting its commitment to support children's early attachment experiences
  • Before Bowlby's theory, children were separated from parents when they went to hospital, often for many days + visiting was discouraged/forbidden
  • This suggests that Bowlby's idea of the effects being irreversible are not inevitable + can infact be reversed if maternal love is provided from an early age
  • Further contradictory evidence = Lewis
  • He replicated the thieves study with 500 young people
  • He found that prolonged early separation from the mother did not predict criminality/difficulty forming close relationships
  • This shows other factors may affect the outcome of maternal deprivation