Bowlby's Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

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What is the MDH?

What is the MDH?

An explanation of the consequences of disrupting attachment bonds that sees serious, permanent damage to children’s development as inevitable.

What causes disruptions in attachment?

Short-term separation

Long-term deprivation

Privation

What is short-term separation?

Brief, temporary separations from attachment figures e.g. attending day-care, brief hospitalisation or being left with a baby sitter.

How does Bowlby explain the distress caused by short-term separation?

PDD model:

Protest - immediate reaction e.g. crying, clinging, screaming, an outward expression of the child’s anger, fear, bitterness and confusion.

Despair - protest is replaced by apathetic behaviour. Anger and fear are felt inwardly with little response to comfort, instead the child comforts itself e.g. thumb-sucking.

Detachment - the child responds to people again, but treats everyone warily. Rejection of the caregiver on their reutnr is common, as are signs of anger.

What is long-term separation?

Lengthy or permanent separation from attachment figures, mostly due to divorce as one parent (usually the father) lose contact with their children. Long-term separation can also include death or imprisonment.

What is privation?

Concerns children who have never formed an attachment bond, more likely than deprivation to lead to lasting damage with some fully recovering while others make little improvement. Generally researched through case studies as they are quite rare.

What is institutionalisation?

The effects upon attachments of care provided by orphanages, which Bowlby’s MDH is largely based on - involves a mix of privation and deprivation effects.

Institutionalised children often exhibit disinhibited attachment, characterised by clingy, attention-seeking behaviour and indiscriminate sociability to adults.

What was Bowlby’s (1944) research into thieves?

Compared 44 juvenile thieves with a control group of non-thieves who had suffered emotional problems. 32% of the thieves exhibited affectionless psychopathy, lacking a social conscience.

None of the control group was classified in this way. 86% of the affectionless psychopaths had experienced maternal separation compared to 17% of the thieves who were not affectionless psychopaths. This supports Bowlby’s idea that maternal deprivation can have serious and long-lasting negative effects.

What was found in Romanian orphan studies by Rutter (1998)?

Assessed whether nurturing care could overturn the effects of privation the children had suffered in Romanian orphanages.

They found around 50% of orphans were retarded in cognitive functioning and most were underweight.

At age 4, orphans showed improvements in physical/cognitive development, with the orphans adopted before 6 months of age, doing as well as the British adopted children.

What are the conclusions of Rutter’s orphan studies?

The negative effects of institutionalisation can be overcome by sensitive, nurturing care. It can be seen that separation from carers will not on its own cause negative developmental effects as British adopted children did not suffer developmental outcomes.

What are evaluation points of Rutter’s study?

Children only assessed up to the age of 4, so subsequent follow-ups are required to assess the long-term effects of institutionalisation and the effects of subsequent enriching environments.

Only some children received detailed clinical investigations so it is difficult to fully generalise the findings.

As children were not studied while in the Romanian orphanages, it is not possible to state which aspects of privation were most influential.