| How does the bowlby's maternal deprivation theory explain criminality? | The idea that maternal deprivation causes affectionless psychopathy. Lack of guilt and empathy ofr others, bond needs to be established within the first few years as it is unique and superior, mother needs to act as a template and a role model. |
| What did Bowlby's study find? | Over 1/2 had been seperated from mothers in for > months in the first 5 years compared to 4% fo controls
32% showed affectionless psychopathy comapred to 0% of the control
86% of affectionless psychopaths had experienced long maternal separation before years old, in residential homes or in hospital without family visits. |
| A weakness of the maternal deprivation theory? | -Is correlational
-Issues with correlational research i that there is no IV can be manipualted, making it hard to establish a proper cause and effect relationhsips which means that there are possible extraneous varibles that may have differed the results
-There are likekly to be a mediating factors between the relationship between maternal deprivation and criminal behaviour, eg: lack of funds due to lack of income and poverty is a stronger indictor of crime
-It can be said that the children experienced privation instead of deprivation as the bond was never secure/present within the first place, casting doubt onto the maternal deprivation theory |
| A weakness of the maternal deprivation theory ? | -Socially sensitive
-Bowlby states that if the mother is no present within the first 2 sensitive years of a child's life, this will not allow them to form a monotropic bond with their mother. Without this, it causes problmes for the rest of the child's life, placing sole blame on the mother.
-It can be said that the theory lacks temporal validity seeing as the results cannot be applied to society nowadays, this can be by more mother going to work earlier and different types of families (same-sex families and single-fathers) and ther children are fine
-Therefore, could cause ethical implications seeing as the theory negatively impact working class mothers from receiving childcare if the child is under 5 years old as well as being used against men and gender roles. |
