3.5.1 Bowlby's Theory of Maternal Deprivation

Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis

Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment: explains why we form attachments to our caregivers

Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory of attachment: explains what happens to children when they are deprived of an attachment figure

When children are deprived of an attachment figure they…

• Never have a loving attachment during the critical period
• Are separated from their loving attachment figure during the critical period Deprivation from the caregiver during the critical period will have harmful effects on a child's emotional, social, physical and intellectual development. "Affectionless psychopath"

Children need a continuous relationship with their mothers, not just food.

Frequent and prolonged separation would cause irreversible damage to the child's development

Maternal deprivation has a negative impact on children's development but if adequate substitute care is provided these effects can be avoided.

• Continued emotional care from the mother is essential for the normal development of emotion and intellect.

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• Separation causes deprivation - unless alternate care is offered.

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• The critical period is said to be 30 months and if the baby is separated from the mother for a prolonged time within the first 30 months psychological damage is inevitable.

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• Intellectual development- if the baby is deprived of maternal care in the critical period then they can suffer from mental retardation and a low IQ.

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• Emotional development- lack of emotional care from the mother can lead to affectionless psychopathy and inexperience to feel guilt or strong emotions which can prevent the ability to develop a normal relationship.

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• 44 thieves 📖- 44 delinquent teens were accused of stealing. 14 displayed signs of affection-less psychopathy and of these, 12 experienced prolonged exposure from the mother during the critical period. This contrasted to only 5 psychopaths out of the remaining 30 who experienced separation. Suggests prolonged early separation causes affectionless psychopathy.

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Bowlby had several methodological limitations. Researcher bias was present as Bowlby was aware of what he wanted to find and so phrased questions in a way which influenced the participants to reply in a certain way (leading questions). In addition, Bowlby based his theory of maternal deprivation on interviews with war orphans conducted by Goldfarb. This study has issues with confounding variables as the traumatic experience and ptsd developed may be a bigger influence on a child's development than maternal deprivation. Bowlby's original source of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and wouldn't be taken seriously nowadays.

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A strength is that animal studies have demonstrated maternal deprivation. Levy et al showed that separation of a baby rat from its mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on social development. Harlow's study also demonstrates this. On the other hand, the extent to which animal studies are generalised to humans is debatable.

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Another limitation of Bowlby's theory is that monotropy is seen as socially sensitive especially in the case that mothers are the primary caregiver. Feminists such as Burman raised the point that such studies have created laws on the separation of child and mother leading to criminality and future adulthood issues. This puts stress on the mothers which pushes them into certain lifestyle choices which could prevent them from having a job or feeling guilty for doing so. However, this wasn't Bowlby's intention when he published the study as he only tried to boost the status of the mother.