In his hypothesis, Bowlby believed that an infant’s failure to attach to a
primary caregiver would have long term effects. This essay will attempt to
evaluate Bowlby’s deprivation hypothesis. Firstly, the terms ‘attachment’
and ‘deprivation’ will be defined. Following that, a full definition of the
hypothesis will be made, and then an attempt will be made to describe and
understand the studies and period of history that lead to Bowlby’s ideas and
the influence they generated. A full evaluation will be made of his deprivation
hypothesis, including detailed criticisms of his theory. Finally, conclusions
will be drawn to show if Bowlby’s deprivation hypothesis can still retain any
credibility. The first task is to define the terms attachment and deprivation.
In 1973 the leading attachment psychologist, Mary Ainsworth, pointed out that
“Attachment is an affectional tie that one person forms to another person,
binding them together in space, and enduring over time”. Deprivation can occur
when there is insufficient opportunity for interaction with a mother figure
(privation), when there is insufficient interaction with mother (masked
deprivation), or when there are repeated breaches of ties with mother figures.
In 1949, the World Health Organisation became concerned about the number of
homeless children, or children who were growing up in institutions as a result
of the war years. They commissioned Bowlby to look into this matter, and to
report to them whether these children were likely to be suffering from their
experiences, and what the best kind of upbringing for such children was. Bowlby
concluded that a warm intimate and continuing relationship with a mother figure
is an essential precondition for mental health. Maternal deprivation or a
disturbed emotional attachment between mother and child was said to cause
irreparable damage, not only to the child but also to society as a whole. He
stated (1951) “deprived children, whether in their own homes or not, are a
source of social infection as real and serious as are carriers of diphtheria and
typhoid”. Bowlby’s report to the WHO had a great deal of influence among
health care officials, social workers, and parents. But the conclusions he came
to were very controversial and caused arguments right from the very beginning.
Contrary to behaviourists and Freudians, who thought that physical comfort was a
caregiver’s primary concern, Bowlby (1951) suggested that emotional care was
at least equally important. He states that “maternal attachment is as
essential for healthy psychological development as vitamins and minerals are for
physical health”. Bowlby (1951) also proposed the concept of monotropy, that
is the need for one central caregiver, usually the mother, but alternatively the
father or another person. Finally, Bowlby (1951) felt that there was a critical
period in the formation of attachments. He believed that children who experience
maternal deprivation below the age of four will suffer permanent damage. Three
landmark studies conducted in the 1950s supported his views. In 1946, Bowlby
looked at the life histories of eighty-eight children who had been referred to
his psychiatric clinic, half of whom had a criminal record for theft. Fourteen
of the ‘thieves’ displayed an ‘affectionless’ character, that is, a lack
of normal affection, shame or sense of responsibility. Almost all of these
affectionless children (eighty-six per cent of them) had suffered ‘early and
prolonged separations from their mothers’. In practice, this meant that, at
least before the age of two, these children had continually or repeatedly been
in foster homes or hospitals, often not visited by their families. Of the
remaining seventy-four children who were not affectionless, only seven (one per
cent) had been separated. This appears to be strong evidence in support of
Bowlby'’ hypothesis, but the data was retrospective and, more importantly,
correlational. It can not be assumed whether the maladjustment was caused by the
separations themselves or if there was a third factor responsible for both
maladjustment and separations, for example general family discord could be cause
of both. This was one of Rutter’s criticisms, which will be discussed later,
in further detail. More support for Bowlby’s views came from a piece of
classic research conducted by Lorenz (1935). In this study, Lorenz became
‘mother’’ to a brood of goslings. It was already known that many birds
attach themselves to the first figure they see upon hatching and persist in this
attachment, and Lorenz’s work confirmed this. The phenomenon is called
imprinting, an ethological concept taken from embryology. During pre-natal
development, there are short periods when an individual is especially
vulnerable. These times are called ‘critical periods’, and the effect is an
imprint. Imprinting is an example of an instinct, an inherited behaviour pattern
that predisposes an individual to certain forms of learning at critical times in
development. Bowlby suggested that attachment behaviour is a kind of imprinting
and is irreversible. However, in more recent studies of adopted children, Tizard
(1977) have found that older children can form satisfactory new relationships
with adults despite the lack of earlier attachment. A third line of evidence
came from Harlow’s work with rhesus monkeys (1959), an experiment was devised
where a monkey was provided with two ‘mothers’, one a wire cylinder with a
monkey-like face and a feeding bottle attached, the other with no feeding bottle
but wrapped in a cloth. The position taken by behaviourists and Freudians (Gleitman
etc 1988????) would be that the monkeys should become attached to the
‘mother’ that offered food rather than comfort. In fact, the monkeys spent
most of their time with the cloth mother, visiting the other one only for food.
When they were frightened, they always went to the cloth mother. In later life,
the monkeys raised without a responsive mother became socially maladjusted and
had difficulty with mating and parenting. When considering Harlow’s research,
it could be argued that making generalisations from animal to human behaviour is
not always appropriate. (REF). Behaviourists argue that the difference between
human and non-human species are quantitative rather than qualitative, but other
psychologists believe that certain unique features of the human species (such as
consciousness and language) mean that non-human animal research has limited
applicability. REF Harlow’s research has also been criticised in terms of the
ethics of allowing animals to be manipulated in this way. Such criticism could
also be applied to Lorenz’s work with goslings. Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
challenged some of Bowlby’s claims. They found attachment to a specific person
started to occur at around 7 months, but multiple attachments were the norm. For
many the attachment to the mother was at the top of the hierarchy, but for
others the main attachment was to the father. They also found the strength of
attachment was not related to the length of time spent with the child, or to
basic caretaking functions of feeding etc., being fulfilled. It was the quality
and intensity of interaction that was important. Studies of Kibbutzs support
this as despite multiple mothering their primary attachment were still with
their parents (Sagi et al, 1978). Therefore, these studies do not support the
behaviourists of Freud as both theories state feeding is important for
attachment to occur. These findings suggest that Bowlby was correct in
identifying the importance of attachment, but incorrect in overemphasising the
single maternal role and the time factor for all children. Attachment, however
is only one part of his theory. Another part relates to the effects of
deprivation. Rutter (1981) felt that the main problem with the concept of
maternal deprivation was that it muddled together a range of essentially
different experiences. He felt that separation is not the crucial factor in
emotional disturbance. Instead, it may be that general family discord underlies
the emotional disturbances observed by Bowlby. It may also be that affectionless
psychopathy is due to the initial failure to form attachments (privation) rather
than attachment disruption (deprivation). Finally, situations where children
experience deprivation, such as short hospital stays, may create emotional
disturbance because of the strange and frightening environment as much as the
separation and interference with attachments. Bowlby’s reliance on
retrospective studies linking caregiver separation with delinquency cannot be
seen as establishing a causal link between the two. It is equally possible that
factors other than the absence of the mother (lack of parental supervision for
example) could have been responsible for the delinquency. Rutter (1981) found
that it was the circumstances surrounding the loss that was most likely to
determine the consequences rather than the loss per se. Bowlby’s deprivation
hypothesis was important in changing our view of early emotional behaviour from
one of dependency, the behaviourist and Freudian view, to one where the infant
is an active participant in eliciting care. The criticisms served to refine this
theory in several important ways: to include multiple attachments, to place less
emphasis on mother-love and to distinguish between different kinds of
deprivation. McFaydon (1994) suggests that many critics ‘seem almost to have
got stuck in a time warp, hanging on to [Bowlby’s] early ideas, which were of
course extremely controversial but also important and influential at the
time’.