Concept
Maternal deprivation
The lack, loss or disruption of a warm, intimate and continuous relationship between a young child and its mother or a permanent mother-substitute. In his 1951 report for the World Health Organization, Bowlby brought together clinical and research evidence that such deprivation in the first years, whether through institutional care, long hospital stays or repeated changes of caregiver, can impair development and leave lasting emotional damage, including an inability to form close relationships.
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- Introduced by
- John Bowlby
- Key works
- 2
- Related
introduced by
- John Bowlby 1951 Bowlby's 1951 report for the World Health Organization defined maternal deprivation and drew together the evidence for its harm, including earlier work by Spitz, Goldfarb and others and his own 1944 study of juvenile thieves, which linked early separation from the mother to an 'affectionless' character.
gave rise to
- Attachment theory Attachment theory was Bowlby's attempt to explain why the deprivation and separation documented in his 1951 report do such harm, by identifying the nature of the child's tie to its mother.
derives from
- Hospitalism Spitz and Wolf's interpretation of hospitalism fed into Bowlby's post-war theory of maternal deprivation, and the notion of hospitalism was later widened to severe and lasting maternal deprivation in general.