Bowlby claimed that children who experience early and lasting separations from their primary attachment figure would experience later emotional maladjustment - Consider the extent to which Bowlby's research has been supported.

Rebecca Johnson

12A

Bowlby claimed that children who experience early and lasting separations from their primary attachment figure would experience later emotional maladjustment. Consider the extent to which Bowlby’s research has been supported by research evidence related to privation (24 marks)

Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis supports this idea that if a child is unable to form a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with its primary care giver. Bowlby demonstrated this idea in his study of 44 thieves. Bowlby used 88 clients’ form a child guidance clinic where he worked. Out the 88 children 44 were the ‘thieves’, due to the fact that they had been referred to the clinic because of stealing. He identified these as been affectionless psychopaths, because they appeared to have little sense of social responsibility and showed no guilt for their crimes. The other children referred to the clinic had not committed any crimes, were emotionally maladjusted, but did not show any signs of antisocial behavior. These children were not diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths and they acted as the control group. Bowlby then interviewed the children and their parents and was able to build up a record of their early life experiences. His overall findings were that 86% of the ‘thieves’ diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths had experienced early and prolonged separations from their mothers whereas very few of the other children had experienced these separations. Therefore he concluded that early and lasting separations do lead to the later emotional maladjustment.

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Bowlby’s hypothesis has been supported by research evidence into privation to a great extent. Privation is when there is a lack of an attachment. There have been two main lines of evidence regarding privation. These are a set of case histories of children raised in extreme isolation and longitudinal studies of children in institutional care. The case histories of children who have been raised in isolated and deprived circumstances demonstrate that firstly some children never recover form their early privation and some children show remarkable recovery. There are three main cases of isolation, Isabelle, Czechoslovakian twins and Genie. Mason (1942) and Davis (1947) studied the case of Isabelle. She was kept in isolation in a darkened room with her mother who was deaf and without speech. She had not been given a good diet therefore had severe rickets. She could only communicate with her mother through sign language. The mother escaped from isolation when Isabelle was six years old. When Isabelle was discovered and transferred she behaved like a wild child and only made croaking noises. She was rehabilitated and by 18 months she could speak 2000 words, could read and write and could compose imaginative stories. The next case was the Czechoslovakian twins, which was studied by Koluchova (1976). The twin’s mother had died while giving birth to them. They went to a children’s home for 11 months, spent 6 months with their aunt and then had to go and stay with their father and stepmother. The father was of low intelligence and the stepmother would keep then inside as they were never allowed out. They were kept in either an unheated closet or a cellar. They were discovered at the ages of 7 and as a result of their stepmother’s cruelty they could hardly walk, had acute rickets, were fearful and their speech was poor. The twins were also rehabilitated like Isabelle and managed to make excellent progress and live a fairly normal life. Curtiss (1977) studied Genie, who was found when she was 13 years old. She had suffered years of isolation, severe neglect and physical restraint. She was strapped to a child’s potty in the attic by her father. She did not recover as easily as Isabelle and the Czechoslovakian twins despite intervention and being placed with a foster family. These three cases of isolation do support Bowlbys maternal deprivation hypothesis, because they all show that a lack o f a loving primary attachment figure can lead to emotional maladjustment and some children may not recover as easily as others. For example Genie did not recover as easily, which may have been because she was in isolation for a longer period of time than the others and therefore she may have been passed the age of recovery. She also may have had to endure harsher experiences and depending on the individual it affects how well a feral child recovers.

Another way of looking at privation is to consider the effects of institutionalizations, in situations where infants have never had the opportunity to form any attachments. Barbara Tizard et al produced a study to investigate the effects of institutional care. The focus of the longitudinal was on 65 children who placed in an institution when they were less than 4 months years old. There was an explicit policy in the institution against caregivers forming attachments with the children and before the age of 4 the children had had 50 caregivers. This coincidently shows that the children and the caregivers did not make any specific attachments. By the age of 4, at least 24 of the children had been adopted, 15 had returned to their natural homes and the rest of the children stayed in the institution. The children were assessed at the age of 4,18,16. Overall it was found that the adopted children had generally close attachments to their parents and good family relationships. The same pattern was not shown for the children who had been returned to their natural home, therefore we could say that Bowlby was wrong when he said that ‘bad’ homes are preferred. On the other hand the latter children had gone back to the homes where their parents were ambivalent about them, whereas the other children had gone to homes where the parents wanted them. The overall conclusion of this experiment was that the two ex-institution groups adopted and restored differed within their family relationships. However there were similarities in the behavior of the two groups outside the family when interacting with other adults and peers. Both groups were more likely to seek adult attention and approval than the control children and were less successful in their peer relationships. Therefore it can be concluded that the early effects of institutionalization were improved by subsequent attachments but there were lasting affects as well. In my opinion I think that this study does support

Bowlbys hypothesis, because he said that without a child having the love and care of a specific attachment they would not be emotionally stable when they were older. This same pattern is shown by Tizard and Hodges ads the children in this study had been institutionalized and therefore did not have the chance to make any attachment therefore this caused them to gain detrimental affects.