Bowlby’s monotropic theory is an explanation for how attachments form in the first place he believes that healthy psychological development is dependent upon attachments forming between infants and their mothers in contrast bal's maternal deprivation Theory tries to explain what happens if attachments have formed but are broken there is prolonged separation Bowlby argues that disruption of the attached M relationship results in serious and permanent damage to a child's emotional social and intellectual development having said all that let's now explore how we can critically evaluate the maternal deprivation Theory one of the strengths of the theory is its practical application this is because bal's Theory Drew attention to the importance of the early years of a child's life for their later development particularly the significance of establishing a strong attachment Bond with their caregiver as a result these ideas went on to shape a number of key areas we can see this firstly with maternity leave today in the UK women are entitled to 52 weeks maternity leave so that they can take an extended period of leave from work to care for their child enabling them to form a strong relationship in recent years this has been extended to include the father so that they can share it with the mother these changes have come in part from the the research and ideas of Bowlby and therefore show the value in his ideas for the benefit of society secondly we can see the practical application of bal's theory in terms of how vulnerable children are cared for sometimes separation between a mother and a child may be unavoidable for all sorts of reasons this can particularly be the case for children in hospital for a prolonged period of time as we saw with Derek one of the juvenile thieves in bal's study and also for children who cannot be raised by their parents and so have been placed in an institution for an extended period of time what can be done is to recognize that those children are in a potentially vulnerable situation those caring for the children need to be aware of the potential dangers and know how to help and support the child's development in fact you can see the significance of Bowlby’s theory in that he was asked to provide a report to the World Health Organization entitled maternal care and mental health a contribution to the United Nations program for the welfare of homeless children however much of his research has received plenty of criticism just remember in the exam you will be asked to evaluate Bowlby’s Theory and one of the ways you can do this is by evaluating the research on which the theory is based but make sure that when you evaluate the study and the research that you are clearly linking it back to the evaluation of his theory and I'll give you examples of this as we go along so firstly bal's 1944 study into the juvenile thieves was lacking a control group you may remember that there were two groups group one were the 44 juvenile thieves and group two were 44 other juveniles who had been referred to his clinic for emotional problems but had not committed theft but there was no control group no group who weren't referred to bal's clinic for any issues at all in fact Bowlby himself in his study acknowledges the study would of course be of very much more value if a third series of ordinary school children could have been compared against these other two why well without the control group it limits the extent to which Bowlby can conclude that maternal deprivation is the key factor in causing the problems who knows he may have found that there were some children who had affectional Psychopathic Tendencies who were never separated from their mother as a result this undermines the theory because the research it is based on can be questioned another limitation of bal's research is that it's potentially biased this is firstly because Bowlby himself carried out the assessments for affectional psychopathy which means he knew what he was hoping to find now we're not saying that Bowlby intentionally biased his results to get the results he wanted but there is the possibility that because he was already aware of each child's history before he assessed them he may unconsciously have been more likely to interpret what the child says to fit him with his ideas the second way the data from the study might be biased is that much of the data gathered from the mother about their child is retrospective this means that the mothers were interviewed about what had happened in their past this can potentially lead to problems because the mother may selectively share events that happened avoiding to mention events that put her or her child in a bad light she may also inaccurately recall events that happened or perhaps overe exaggerate or downplay events that happened in other words the research is relying on the honesty and accuracy of the recall from the mothers therefore this potential bias questions the validity of the study and furthermore calls into question the maternal deprivation Theory next is the problem of temporal validity this is about the extent to which the findings from the research apply across time in other words bal's research was conducted in the late 1930s have things changed and are progressed in such a way today that it makes it hard for his findings to accurately apply to today well you may remember from the previous video what life was like back in the 1930s there was no NHS and no Universal benefits such as child benefit payments to help families this meant that the poor were very poor and poverty was high in 1938 90% of criminal cases were theft today the introduction of these benefits have made a dramatic difference to child development in the UK and whilst it has not completely eliminated poverty it has reduced much of the need for many to steal and that's not to mention how much the wage children are raised today is significantly different from bal's day as a result it undermines bal's maternal deprivation Theory because it makes it hard to generalize the findings from the 1930s to our current day one of the best ways to test a theory is for the supporting research to be replicated so if research that tried to replicate bulb's research would it reveal similar results Hilder Lewis in 1954 partially replicated Bowlby study but instead of 88 children there were 500 young people these children were admitted to the meran Reception Center which was basically a center for what they called delinquent maladjusted homeless or neglected children what they found was that when they looked at the history of early prolonged separation for a child from their mother what Balby called deprivation it did not predict criminal behavior and it did not predict problems with forming close relations ships with others in other words there did not seem to be a relationship between maternal deprivation and the consequences that Bowlby suggested moving from criticisms of his study to focus more specifically on the ideas within the theory there is research by kich chova in 1976 this case study undermines one of the key ideas of the theory this is the case of Andre and Vana who are identical twin boys born in the 1960s in Czech Slovakia known today as the separate countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia tragically they lost their mother shortly after they were born they were then cared for by authorities and then their Auntie fostered them for 6 months the boys were then raised by their father and his new wife who apparently was very cruel to the twins beating them regularly and banishing them to The Cellar of the house for the next 5 and 1 half years the twin boys were were then discovered at the age of seven they were dwarf-like being less physically developed their speech was limited and apparently they did not understand the meaning of pictures doctor's reports stated that they were permanently damaged both physically and mentally now at this point bal's Theory would state that crucially these children have been separated during the critical period having not have the opportunity to form a strong bond or attachment with their caregiver as a result he would predict lower intelligence emotional problems difficulties forming relationships and perhaps criminal involvement importantly for Bowlby though was the idea that these consequences are irreversible so what happened to these boys after they were rescued at the age of seven at this point they were removed from their parents and received help with their physical development and entered a school for children with severe learning difficulties they were later legally adopted by a dedicated woman Woman as a result they caught up academically with Children of their own age and emotionally their development was normal later in life they completed formal education and gain jobs in electronics they completed national service for their country and both later married and had children so perhaps Bowlby's statement that complete recovery is not possible needs rethinking finally as if this isn't enough already we have a criticism related to the previous one from Psych olist Michael Rutter he argued that Bowlby may have overstated the effects of deprivation and failed to make an important distinction in 1972 Rutter wrote a book called maternal deprivation reassessed in which he argued that a distinction needed to be made between separation from an attachment figure loss of an attachment figure the complete lack of an attachment this was because for Rutter the long-term effects are different for each of these and he particularly wanted to make a distinction between deprivation which is the loss of the primary caregiver and privation which is the failure to ever form an attachment in the first place Rutter wrote affectionless psychopathy was due not to the breaking of relationships but rather to the initial failure to form bonds therefore this challeng is the accuracy of Bowlby’s theory because the severe long-term consequences are thought to be more to do with privation than deprivation.