My notes summarises Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory in attachment efficiently, sometimes offering a simple explanation and sometimes offering a more detailed approach to the subject.
Bowlby believed that maternal deprivation from the main caregiver would lead to
intellectual and emotional dysfunction in children.
Research based on children that had been raised in orphanages and committed theft.
There was confounding variables and potential bias in his study.
There have also been real life examples of deprivation where people have recovered.
-Hypothesis (1953):
The safest dose of separation from the main caregiver was zero.
Maternally Deprived is continuous separation or withdrawal of love from a caregiver.
Caregiver does not need to be the biological mother or a female.
The first 2.5 years are critical for this and the next few years are also important.
Maternally deprived children will have a lower IQ and perhaps be affectionless psychopathy.
-Contributing research:
Goldfarb compared children who were adopted early to those who remained. Their IQ was
assessed at 12 and averaged at 96 for adopted children and 68 for not adopted children.
Therefore, maternal deprivation leads to intellectual delay.
Bowlby also assessed 44 teenagers convicted of theft. He assessed their levels of maternal
deprivation and compared them to teenagers that had not committed crimes. 14/44 were
classed as affectionless psychopaths, 12 of these had experienced maternal deprivation.
Therefore, maternal deprivation leads to affectionless psychopathy.
-Research has suggested that institutionalisation can have negative impacts on children. Outline
the possible negative effects of institutionalisation on a child (4).
The child could become void of any emotions and will become detached from the world. Their IQ will
suffer as they do not have the safe base that the mother provides. They will also not interact with
other children and adults because they are used to being by themselves, so they do not feel the
need to interact. He has passed the critical period in which attachments need to be made so it will
be hard to reverse this. He may grow up to commit crimes.
-Evaluation:
The evidence that he relied on from Goldfarb was flawed because there could have been a
confounding variable as the children might have suffered abuse/neglect rather than
maternal deprivation.
There was also potential for bias, as he knew who his thieves were. The thieves may have
answered untruthfully, which would make his theory questionable because the evidence is.
There is a potential for social desirability as the parents do not want to be seen as the reason
why their child grew up to steal things.
Bowlby also didn’t differentiate privation from deprivation in the studies he used.
Institutionalised children may not have formed attachment (privation). Therefore, his
conclusions are exaggerated.
Koluchova (1976)- studied the development of twins that had suffered abuse for years and
were eventually adopted. They showed no signs of intellectual delay or affectionless
psychopathy. This could be an anomaly because he only studied the twins.
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