Maternal deprivation hypothesis: Bowlby

John Bowlby proposed the maternal deprivation hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, a breaking of the maternal bond with the child during the early years of life is likely to have serious consequences for its intellectual, social, and emotional development andmany of these negative effects of maternal deprivation were permanent or irreversible.

Bowlby was influenced in the development of his ideas by the work of the ethologists, who studied animals in their natural surroundings. One of the ethologists (Konrad Lorenz) kept some goose eggs beside him. When the goslings had hatched, they followed him around rather than their mother.¹ Lorenz used the term imprinting to refer to the learned response of following the first moving object they see, which is found in some species of birds. He argued that imprinting can only occur during a short critical period very early in the bird's life. Bowlby argued that something like imprinting occurs in infants. According to his notion of monotropy, they are born with a strong tendency to become attached to one particular individual. This individual will usually (but not always) be the infant's mother. He also argued that there is a critical period during which the infant's attachment to the mother or other caregiver must take place. This critical period ends at some point between 1 year and 3 years of age. After that time, it is no longer possible to establish a powerful attachment to the mother or other individual.

Experimental evidence

Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis was based in part on the work of Spitz and Goldfarb. Spitz went to South America, and visited several very poor orphanages and other institutions. Most of the children in these orphanages received little attention or warmth from the staff, as a result of which they became apathetic. Many of the children suffered from anaclitic depression, a state involving resigned helplessness and loss of appetite.

Goldfarb compared two groups of infants from а poor and inadequately staffed orphanage. One group consisted of those infants who spent only the first few months of their live-s in the orphanage before being fostered. The other group consisted of infants who spent three years at the orphanage before fostering. These two groups were tested at various times up to the age of 12. Those children who had spent longest in the orphanage did less well than the others on intelligence tests at all ages, they were less socially mature, they were more often loners, and they were more likely to be aggressive.

The findings of Spitz and Goldfarb provide less support for the maternal-deprivation hypothesis than Bowlby assumed.

Bowlby presented evidence that maternal deprivation can have severe long-term effects. He compared juvenile delinquents with other emotionally disturbed adolescents who had not committed any crimes. Thirty-two percent of the juvenile delinquents but none of the emotionally disturbed adolescents showed affectionless psychopathy. This is a disorder involving a lack of guilt and remorse. Of the affectionless delinquents, 64% had experienced privation or deprivation in early childhood, compared to only 10% of the juvenile delinquents without affectionless psychopathy. However, these findings were not repeated in later studies.

Evaluation of Bowlby

Schaffer and Emerson, in a study mentioned before, visited the homes of babies several times during their first year of life. They decided how attached the infant was to various adults on the basis of its level of protest when separated from each adult. Fifty-nine percent of infants had formed more than one attachment by 10 months of age, and the figure rose to 87% by the age of 18 months. At the older age, only about half of the infants were mainly attached to their mother, with 30% being mainly attached to their father. Thus, the attachment to the mother is often of less central importance to young children than was assumed by Bowlby.

Rutter has argued persuasively that the maternal deprivation hypothesis is over-simplified. He pointed out that there is an important distinction between deprivation and privation. Deprivation occurs when a child has formed an important attachment, but is then separated from the major attachment figure. In contrast, privation occurs when a child has never formed a close attachment with anyone.

Rutter applied the distinction between deprivation and privation to Bowlby's study on affectionless psychopathy. Many of the juvenile delinquents had experienced several changes of home and of principal caretaker during their early childhood. This suggested to Rutter that their later problems were due to privation, rather than deprivation as Bowlby had claimed.

Rutter argued that the effects of privation are much more severe and long-lasting than the effects of deprivation.

Rutter suggested that the ejects of deprivation depend on the precise reasons for the separation, rather than on the fact of separation itself as Bowlby had claimed.

One of the main assumptions made by Bowlby was that the negative effects of maternal deprivation cannot be undone. There have been relatively few studies on this issue, partly because it requires a long-term look at changes over time. Some of the most convincing evidence was reported by Tizard and Hodges and Tizard. They studied children who spent the first two to seven years of their lives in an institution. On average, each child had been looked after by 24 different caregivers by the age of 2. The lack of opportunity to form a strong, continuous relationship with any one adult means that they had suffered maternal deprivation in Bowlby's sense. In spite of this, the institutions studied by Tizard were markedly better than those studied by Spitz and by Goldfarb. At the age of 4-7, the children studied by Tizard had an average IQ of 105. Thus, the children's cognitive development had probably not been held back by the institutions.

Hodges and Tizard found that the family relationships of the adopted children at the age of 16 were as good as those of ordinary families in which none of the children had been put into an institution. However, the 16-year-olds who had returned to their families showed little affection for their parents, and their parents were not very affectionate to them. Both groups were similar in their relationships with their peers (other adolescents of the same age). They were less likely than other children to have a special friend or to regard other adolescents as sources of emotional support.

In sum, the long-term effects of maternal deprivation depend lo a great extent on what happens after the period of deprivation has ended. The love and involvement provided by adoptive parents can do much to allow deprived children to develop close relationships and to become well-adjusted. However, if deprived children are returned to their own families when they are not really wanted, the outlook is much less favourable.

A few researchers have looked at the effects of very extreme privation and isolation on children. In general, it is surprising how resilient these children appear to be. Koluchova (1976) studied identical twinswho had spent most of the first seven years of their lives locked in a cellar. They had been treated very badly, and were often beaten. They were barely able to talk, and relied mainly on gestures rather than speech. The twins were fostered at about the age of 9. By the time they were 14, their behaviour was essentially normal. By the age of 20, they seemed to be of above average intelligence,, and had excellent relationships with the members of their foster family.

Social learning theory

According to the social learning theorist Bandura, observational learning involves learning by observing the ways in which models behave. If infants and young children see their parents behaving in caring and loving ways towards them and towards each other, this makes it easier for them to behave in similar ways to other people. Children who are separated from their parents, and who do not observe strong attachment behaviouir in others, find it much harder to develop attachments themselves.

Evidence that observational learning can be effective in improving the ways in which children relate to other people was reported by O'Connor. Children who avoided playing with other children were shown a film of children being sociable and playing happily together. Every child who saw the film played more with other children afterwards, and this effect seemed to last for a long time.

As Mischel pointed out, observational learning can be very specific in its effects. For example, a young child may observe obvious signs of attachment between her parents in the living room but not in the kitchen. This may lead her to learn that attachment behaviour is appropriate in only certain places. In order for observational learning of attachment behaviour to be effective, such behaviour needs to be observed in several different places with different people.