Att - Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation

Question 1

What is the theory of maternal deprivation?

Answer 1

• That an attachment is essential for healthy psychological and emotional development and there are negative consequences for being deprived of a mother figure
• Long term effects of deprivation may include separation anxiety which may lead to problem behaviour such as being very clingy and avoiding school

Question 2

What is Bowlby’s 44 juvenile thieves study and its evaluation?

Answer 2

• Procedure: Case studies of 44 criminal teenagers who had been stealing and a control group of 44 ‘emotionally disturbed’ teenagers who hadn’t been stealing
• Findings: Of the thieves, 14 displayed affectionless psychopathy and 12 of those 14 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers during their first 2 years (within critical period of 30 months).
  MD = AP = criminality
• Conclusion: Deprivation from main carer early in life can have very harmful long term consequences

EV:
- Only establishes a correlation between MD and AP so it can’t be said that one causes another
- Observer bias, Bowlby carried out the assessments himself, knowing what he hoped to find
- Relied on retrospective data which may be unreliable ; recall bias, involved participants and their families recalling past separations which can lead to inaccurate or distorted memories
- Other things were not considered for example growing up in poverty led them to steal
- Privation (never) vs deprivation (broken)

Question 3

Evidence for and against Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

Answer 3

• Goldfarb supports Bowlby’s claim, found that orphanage children who were socially and maternally deprived were less intellectually and socially developed
• Can be irreversible, Skeels and Dye found that children who had been socially deprived during their first two years of life quickly improved their IQ scores if they were transferred to a school where they got one-to-one care
• Can be reversable - romainian orphan study