ATTACHMENTS: Bowlby’s Theory Of Maternal Deprivation

Question 1

What was Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation?

Answer 1

The idea that the presence of a mother (or a mother-substitute) is essential for normal psychological development

Being separated from the mother in early childhood had serious consequences and means you attachment has been broken or disrupted

Question 2

Deprivation (law of continuity and accumulation)

Answer 2

• brief separation is fine, esp w a substitute caregiver
• it simply means the child is not in the presence of the primary attachment figure
• this only becomes and issue for development if the child is deprived (if they lose an element of care)

Question 3

Bowlby’s critical period

Answer 3

If there is a prolonged separation before the ages 2-5
AND there is no substitute carerer, this may lead to deprivation and cause psychological harm later on

Question 4

What is the damage later on?
(Intellectual development)

Answer 4

If children were deprived of paternal care for too long during the critical period they would suffer from mental retardation / delayed intellectual development characterised by ABNORMALLY LOW IQ

Evidence: studies of adoption, Goldfarb (1947) found lower IQ in children who had remained in institutions as opposed to those who were fostered- thus had a higher standard of emotional care.

Question 5

What is the damage later on?
(Emotional development)

Answer 5

Emotional development: being deprived of a mother also effects the children’s emotional development

Bowlby identified affection-less psychopathy: the inability to experience guild or strong emotion for others.

• this prevents the person developing normal relationships and is often associated with criminality.
• affectionless psychopaths cannot appreciate the feeling of victims so lack remorse for their actions

Question 6

Bowlby’s theory of irreversibility

Answer 6

The consequences of long-term separation cannot be reversed

Question 7

44 theives study -method

Answer 7

aim: to examine the link between effectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation

Sample: consisted 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
- they were interviewed for sings of affectionless psychopathy
characterised by lack of affection, lack of guilt for their actions and a lack of empathy for their victims

• they family was also interviewed in order to establish whether the ‘thieves’ has prolonged early separations from their mothers
• a control group of 44 non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people was set up to see how often maternal separation/ deprivation occurred in children that weren’t theives .

So:
-88 children (opportunity sampling)
-1944
- matched pairs
- split into emotional support/ juvenile criminals

Question 8

44 thieves results

Answer 8

1944
14/44 thieves could be described as affection-less psychopaths
- out of these 14, 12/14 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the 1st 2tears of their life

In contrast, only 5/30 of the remaining thieves had experienced separations

Out of the control group, 2/44 had experiences of long separations

It was concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation causing affectionless psychopathy

Question 9

The positive evaluation for Bowlby’s maternal deprivation theory

Answer 9

Further research in support

Goldfarb 1955: followed up 30 war orphaned children up to age 12
Of this sample, half had been fostered by the age of 4 whilst the other half remained in the orphanage.

At the age 12, both groups of orphans’ IQ was tested. The group fostered had an average IQ of 96 whereas the group that wasn’t fostered by the age of 4 had an **average IQ of 68*

Goldfarb’s findings reiterated the main assumptions of Bowlby’s theory that early separation and the deprivation can lead to long lasting effects on infant development and their development in later life.

(Though it does disprove Bowlby’s theory of irreversibility)

Question 10

Negative evaluations of the Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

Answer 10

1) small sample size
Lewis 1954 partially replicated Bowlby’s 44 theives study on a larger scale, looking at around 500 young people.
In her study, prolonged maternal deprivation did not predict criminality or difficulty to form close relationships
- suggests many other factors may affect the outcome of early maternal deprivation.

2) investigator bias
Bowlby’s study has major design flaws and bias. He carried out the investigation himself, and had individual assessments for affection less psychopathy and family interviews, knowing what he hoped he’d find.
Developmental psychologists suggested that Bowlby may have interpreted the findings in a bias way to generate support.
- can be criticised as inaccurate support evidence

3) failure to distinguish between deprivation and privatisation
Rutter in 1976 calmed the Bowlby was muddling the two concepts together. He drew a distinction between
Deprivation: the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed
Privatisation: where there was a failure to form any attachment in the first place.
Rutter claimed that the sever long-term damage that Bowlby associated with deprivation was most likely from Privatisation

4) damage is not inevitable
Koluchova 1976 reported the case of twin boys from Czechoslovakia who were isolated from 18moths till 7years (their step mum kept them locked in a cupboard) but after that they were looked after by 2 loving adults and appeared to recover fully,
- though this is a case study.