Bowlby used the term maternal deprivation to refer to the separation or loss of the mother as well as failure to develop an attachment. Michael Rutter (1981) argued that if a child fails to develop an attachment this is privation, whereas deprivation refers to the loss of or damage to an attachment.
In Rutter's view, deprivation occurs when the child's attachment is damaged or broken due to either separation from the attached figure, or loss of the attached figure, for instance through divorce or death. There may be short and long term effects of deprivation. We have considered the short term effects earlier, but Rutter views the reasons for the loss of an attachment as crucial in the explanation of long term effects.
Rutter's (1976) evidence from his own research on the long term effects of early separation from mothers reveals the importance of the home environment and previous experiences. His sample comprised 9-12-year-old boys from London and from the Isle of Wight. He looked particularly at anti-social behaviour. His results indicated that:
• there was more anti-social behaviour in boys from families where the parents' marriage was rated as 'very poor' or where parent-child relationships were cold or neglectful
• there was no difference in anti-social behaviour between boys who had separated from one parent and those who had separated from both parents
• when a parent died, a child was only slightly more likely to become delinquent than a child from an 'intact' home
• boys who were separated because of illness or housing problems did not become maladjusted.
Rutter concluded that there was no correlation between separation experiences and delinquency. He argued that delinquency is not caused by disruption of the bond (as Bowlby claimed) because when disruption was final with the death of a parent, there was only a slight increase in delinquency.
Rutter did find that there was a correlation between family discord and delinquency, suggesting that family discord (such as arguing, lack of affection, stress) created a distortion of family relationships. Rutter argued that this was not particularly related to early childhood, as Bowlby claimed. The distorted relationships may be linked to insecure attachments, perhaps even preventing the formation of attachments (privation).
Rutter noted that the long term effects of deprivation showed:
• an increase in anti-social behaviour where the separation had been related to family discord or a history of disturbance in the life of the young person
• children with secure attachments and those who had experienced successful separations previously seemed to be able to withstand the effects of deprivation more than a child whose attachments were insecure
• children differ in their ability to cope with the effects of deprivation; boys appear to be more vulnerable to these effects than girls, as do children between seven months and three years of age.
Attachment PowerPoint Downloads 