Bowlby Maternal Deprivation Theory

Question 1

AO1 first paragraph (critical period, intellectual and development)

Answer 1

• suggets continual presence of care from a mother is essential for normal psychological development of babies
• brief separation does not have significant impact but extended separation can lead to deprivation which causes harm
• First 2.5 years of a child’s life critical period
• bowlby believed if a child is separated from mother for extended period of time during Critical period then psychological damage is inevitable
• Bowlby believed that if a child was deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would experience delayed intellectual development, shown by abnormally low IQ
• Adoption studies have shown this: William Goldfarb (1947) found lower IQ in children who had remained in insinuations opposed to those who were fostered (and had a higher standard of emotional care)

Question 2

AO1 paragraph 2 (emotional development and 44 thieves)

Answer 2

• Bowlby suggested derivation can also affect children’s emotional development
• Bowlby identified “affectionless psychopathy” as the inability to experience guilt of strong emotion towards others (which prevents someone developing normal relationships and is associated with criminality, as they cannot appreciate the feelings of victims so lack remorse for their actions
• Sample of 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing
• All thieves were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy (lack of empathy, lack of guilt about their actions and lack of empathy for their victims)
• Their families were also interviewed to look for prolonged early separation
• Sample was compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal emotionally disturbed young people
• Bowlby found 14 of the 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths; 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their life
• 5 of the other 30 thieves had expended separations
• Only 2 in the control group had experienced long separations
• Bowlby concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy

Question 3

AO3 critical period

Answer 3

• One disadvantage of Bowlby’s theory is the inaccurate fixation on the critical period. Research has shown that irreversible damage is not caused from separation during the critical period as Bowlby suggested.
• Kochova (1976) reported on the case of twins who were isolated from 18 months until 7 years old.
• When they were discovered, they were adopted and given good care and both of the twins ended up getting jobs, degrees and getting married and having children.
• This shows that that even though the twins experienced maternal deprivation during the “critical period” they still managed to form good quality attachments in future life and were not affected intellectually.
• However, the twins were not in true isolation as they had each other, so it could be argued that this led for opportunities for interaction which could have lessened some of the damage cause by the deprivation, therefore lowering the validity of these findings.

Question 4

AO3 poor evidence

Answer 4

• Another disadvantage of Bowlby’s theory is the use of poor evidence.
• Studies that formed the basis of the theory included children who had been orphaned during the war and grown up in poor quality orphanages.
• This means these children will have experienced trauma and poor after care which may have resulted in development difficulties. This means the evidence is flawed as these factors could be the cause of the development difficulties rather than the separation from the children’s mothers.
• Furthermore Bowlby’s 44 “thieves” study had additional flaws including bias due to Bowlby carrying out the assessments (meaning he could have only included the results that he wanted to see in his conclusions).
• The study was also reliant on interviews with family members, this may have lacked validity due to their retrospective nature and the parents could have also changed their answers due to social desirability or demand characteristics.

Question 5

AO3 44 thieves not replicable

Answer 5

• Another limitation of Bowlby’s is most attempts to replicate the 44 “thieves study” have failed to produce similar results.
• For example, Lewis (1954) looked at 500 young people and found early prolonged separation did not predict criminally or difficulty forming relationships.
• However more recent research done by Gao et al (2010) support Bowlby by showing that poor quality maternal care was associated with high psychopathy in adults.
• Due to these conflicting pieces of evidence is it difficult to fully accept maternal deprivation as explanation for abnormal development and psychopathy