Deprivation
Deprivation occurs when an infant is separated from their primary caregiver.
Short Term Deprivation
Examples of short term deprivation include daycare and hospitalisation (either for the child or their attachment figure).
Before Bowlby’s work, hospitals focused entirely on the physical needs of the children and didn’t consider their emotional wellbeing. Children were allowed very little access to their parents when they were in hospital.
Spitz studied children in hospitals and found they became depressed if they suffered from deprivation. At first they were partially depressed but then it developed into what Spitz called hospitalism. Partial depression involved crying and clinging to observers, but severe depression was more concerning, involving weight loss, insomnia and a lack of emotion. Children who were reunited with their mothers while partially depressed could re-adjust in a few months.
Robertson and Robertson followed a 2 year old girl names Laura when she was in hospital for 8 days. Their research caused a great stir – her emotional welfare was affected greatly and it deteriorated throughout her stay. She ended up very withdrawn and no longer showed any affection towards her visiting mother.
They (R&R) repeated the procedure with more children and proposed 3 stages that children go through:
- Protest – children were at first panic-stricken and upset, they cried frequently and tried to stop their parents leaving.
- Despair – they cried less frequently after time had passed but became apathetic and disinterested.
- Detachment – children eventually took an interest in their surroundings but if they reached this stage they often rejected their care giver.
Long Term Deprivation
Long term deprivation includes things like the divorce of a parent or death. In 2001 statistics said that ¼ children are affected by divorce by their 16th birthday.
Cockett and Tripp aimed to compare the effects of parental discord and separation with 3 groups – intact, reordered and discordant. They found that on measures or self-image, social life, school success and health the reordered group came out worse and the intact best. Most of the parents in the sample had dealt with the reordering very badly, few had prepared their children and fewer than half had regular contact with the absent parent.
Fergusson et al used a different method and found that parental discord was more harmful than reordering.
The death of a parent has different psychological effects – blame, guilt, closure and levels of support all differ but it is said that allowing the child to talk about it openly will help.