They concluded the first two years of a child’s life have an important influence on later relationships and spending these in an institution does have an effect. This may have been the cause of some of the behavioural problems shown by these children, but the fact they had formed attachments offers little support for Bowlbys belief in a ‘critical period’ for attachment formation. Early institutionalisation therefore appears not necessarily irreversibly damaging but perhaps children need a great deal of love and support afterwards in order to develop favourably. This is supported by the fact adopted children formed better relationships with their parents as people who adopt children are highly likely to give a great deal of love and care to their children.
Nevertheless small samples often pose a problem in longitudinal studies such as that of Hodges and Tizard. This is because in longitudinal studies attrition occurs meaning the sample size is reduced; this is caused by participants dropping out as the study takes place over a number of years. The problem is that the types of participants likely to drop out are those that are troubled. Although this shouldn’t have affected this study in particular as both the adopted and restored children should have been affected equally reducing the chances of the findings being biased.
There are also possible issues of sample bias concerning this study as perhaps the adopted children were ‘’easier’’ as parents are likely to select children that are easier to get on with. However, this doesn’t explain the difficulties adopted children had making relationships with peers. In theory according to the temperament hypothesis they should have had easier relationships with everyone. This provides support to the view privation has negative long-term effects.
On the other hand there are alternative explanations for the study’s findings of the children at age 16. For example, they may have suffered from poor self-esteem as a result of being adopted and that may perhaps be the reason they lacked the emotional development of their fellow peers and had poor peer relationships.
Another study which looked at the effects of institutional care on the long-term effects of privation was that of Quinton et al (1985). They compared a group of around 50 women who had been reared in institutions and 50 women raised at home. In their 20’s the ex-institutional women had more difficulty acting as parents, had children who spent more time in care and were lacking in warmth when interacting with their children. This supports the idea that privation has irreversible consequences (Rutter) such as being able to form loving, intimate and secure relationships in later life.
Throughout history there have been case studies recorded of children having been raised in conditions of extreme isolation and privation; therefore lacking in emotional care.
Curtis (1989) studied Genie, a girl who spent most of her childhood locked in a room because her father considered her to be retarded. She had little contact with family members and was discouraged from making sounds. She was discovered in 1970, 13 ½ years old, she hadn’t been fed adequately and couldn’t stand erect. She also had no social skills, didn’t understand language and couldn’t speak. However she was given a considerable amount of education in the years after she was found and her ability to perform task that didn’t depend on sound rapidly improved. She did adopt a fairly large vocabulary her language skills failed to reach normal levels. She spoke in short ungrammatical sentences and didn’t understand grammatically complex sentences. Her social skills remained limited due to the fact her language was poor and she remained uninterested in people.
This offers support to Bowlby’s idea of a ‘critical period’ as Genie was unable to fully recover from the effects of privation and also proposes that privation does have long-term negative effects as it prevented her from forming loving and lasting relationships in later life.
Koluchova (1976 and 1991) carried out a case study of the isolation of Czech twins; two identical twin boys who lost their mother shortly after birth. They were cared for, for 1 year by a social agency before being fostered by a maternal aunt for 6 months and then went to live with their remarried father. However his new wife locked them in a cellar and beat them until the age of 7. When found they had virtually no language skills, communicated mainly through gestures, had short stature, rickets and were terrified of many aspects of their new environment. They were removed from their parents and underwent a program of physical rehabilitation in a school for children with severe learning disabilities. They were then fostered into a loving home at age 9.
They caught up academically with their peers and achieved emotional and intellectual normality. By age 14 they showed no signs of unusual behaviour or psychological abnormality and formed loving relationships with members of their foster family. By age 29 they were said to be entirely stable, lacking any abnormalities and enjoying warm relationships. It is important to not that the boys had each other during the early years of their lives so perhaps formed some type of emotional attachment which helped reduce the effects of privation. Their foster family were also extremely loving and supportive which could have helped them to overcome the effects of privation; suggesting that in some circumstances the effects can be reversible.
Case studies however are full of problems. They concern unique individuals who provide us with a detailed record of human experience. It is however difficult to generalise from individual cases and to uncover what actually happened in the past, when retrospective date is used.
Retrospective data is the recall of previous events from the past, which can be a significant number of years previous to the time the data is collected. Recall is never completely accurate; the data from the studies may also be unreliable as questions may not have been answered truthfully. The families involved in the studies/case studies may have tried to present themselves in a better light – social desirability bias. Case studies can’t be generalised because they are representative of only an individual and not a number of people.
The cycle of privation is a theory which suggests that children who experience early privation may be driven to recreate conditions from their own childhood when they become parents, meaning that they are unable to bond with their children in later life. Empirical support for this idea of a cycle comes from Quinton et als study of ex-institutional women.
Reactive Attachment Disorder is the idea that children who suffer from this disorder have learned that the world is unsafe and not to depend on adult caregivers. They develop a protective emotional ‘shell’, isolating themselves from the pain of failing to make an attachment. This ‘shell’ is difficult to remove as it is the sufferer’s way of coping. Therefore those who try to remove it are seen as a threat, so children turn against those who want to help them – caregivers. If untreated children suffering from this disorder may grow up to be sociopaths. A sociopath fails to develop a conscience and does not learn to trust others. They also lack the ability to be genuinely affectionate and are unable to form loving and lasting intimate relationships.
The difficulty with all of this research is we can’t be sure in all cases whether or not the children were attached to someone during their sensitive years and what the quality of that attachment was. In order to assess whether privation does have a profound effect it needs to be clear whether they formed any continuous and secure attachments.
In conclusion, there is a wide range of research which helps us to understand the effects of privation and the circumstances in which these effects can be overcome. However the development of children is vulnerable to many influences of which a lack of an attachment bond which although may be important is not possibly the only one.
