|
The term maternal deprivation is a catch-phrase summarising the early work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, John Bowlby on the effects of separating infants and young children from their mother (or mother substitute)〔Holmes J. p. 221〕 although the effect of loss of the mother on the developing child had been considered earlier by Freud and other theorists. Bowlby's work on delinquent and affectionless children and the effects of hospital and institutional care lead to his being commissioned to write the World Health Organisation's report on the mental health of homeless children in post-war Europe whilst he was head of the Department for Children and Parents at the Tavistock Clinic in London after World War II. The result was the monograph ''Maternal Care and Mental Health'' published in 1951, which sets out the maternal deprivation hypothesis. Bowlby drew together such empirical evidence as existed at the time from across Europe and the USA, including Spitz (1946) and Goldfarb (1943, 1945). His main conclusions, that "the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment" and that not to do so might have significant and irreversible mental health consequences, were both controversial and influential.〔Bowlby J. (1951) p. 11〕 The monograph was published in 14 different languages and sold over 400,000 copies in the English version alone. Bowlby's work went beyond the suggestions of Otto Rank and Ian Suttie that mothering care was essential for development, and focused on the potential outcomes for children deprived of such care. The 1951 WHO publication was highly influential in causing widespread changes in the practices and prevalence of institutional care for infants and children, and in changing practices relating to the stays of small children in hospitals so that parents were allowed more frequent and longer visits. Although the monograph was primarily concerned with the removal of children from their homes it was also used for political purposes to discourage women from working and leaving their children in daycare by governments concerned about maximising employment for returned and returning servicemen. The publication was also highly controversial with, amongst others, psychoanalysts, psychologists and learning theorists, and sparked significant debate and research on the issue of children's early relationships. The limited empirical data and lack of comprehensive theory to account for the conclusions in ''Maternal Care and Mental Health'' led to the subsequent formulation of attachment theory by Bowlby.〔Bowlby J. (1988) p. 24〕 Following the publication of ''Maternal Care and Mental Health'' Bowlby sought new understanding from such fields as evolutionary biology, ethology, developmental psychology, cognitive science and control systems theory and drew upon them to formulate the innovative proposition that the mechanisms underlying an infant's ties emerged as a result of evolutionary pressure. Bowlby claimed to have made good the "deficiencies of the data and the lack of theory to link alleged cause and effect" in ''Maternal Care and Mental Health'' in his later work ''Attachment and Loss'' published between 1969 and 1980. Although the central tenet of maternal deprivation theory—that children's experiences of interpersonal relationships are crucial to their psychological development and that the formation of an ongoing relationship with the child is as important a part of parenting as the provision of experiences, discipline and child care—has become generally accepted, "maternal deprivation" as a discrete syndrome is not a concept that is much in current use other than in relation to severe deprivation as in "failure to thrive". In the area of early relationships it has largely been superseded by attachment theory and other theories relating to even earlier infant–parent interactions. As a concept, parental deficiencies are seen as a vulnerability factor for, rather than a direct cause of, later difficulties. In relation to institutional care there has been a great deal of subsequent research on the individual elements of privation, deprivation, understimulation and deficiencies that may arise from institutional care. ==History== Many traditions have stressed the grief of mothers over deprivation of their children but little has been said historically about young children's loss of their mothers; this may have been because loss of the mother in infancy frequently meant death for a breast-fed infant. In the 19th century, French society bureaucratised a system in which infants were breast-fed at the homes of foster mothers, returning to the biological family after weaning, and no concern was evinced at the possible effect of this double separation on the child. Sigmund Freud may have been among the first to stress the potential impact of loss of the mother on the developing child, but his concern was less with the actual experience of maternal care than with the anxiety the child might feel about the loss of the nourishing breast. As little of Freud's theory was based on actual observations of infants, little effort was made to consider the effects of real experiences of loss. Following Freud's early speculations about infant experience with the mother, Otto Rank suggested a powerful role in personality development for birth trauma. Rank stressed the traumatic experience of birth as a separation from the mother, rather than birth as an uncomfortable physical event. Not long after Rank's introduction of this idea, Ian Suttie, a British physician whose early death limited his influence, suggested that the child's basic need is for mother-love, and his greatest anxiety is that such love will be lost.〔 In the 1930s, David Levy noted a phenomenon he called "primary affect hunger" in children removed very early from their mothers and brought up in institutions and multiple foster homes. These children, though often pleasant on the surface, seemed indifferent underneath. He questioned whether there could be a "deficiency disease of the emotional life, comparable to a deficiency of vital nutritional elements within the developing organism".〔Karen R. pp. 13–17〕 A few psychiatrists, psychologists and paediatricians were also concerned by the high mortality rate in hospitals and institutions obsessed with sterility to the detriment of any human or nurturing contact with babies. One rare paediatrician went so far as to replace a sign saying "Wash your hands twice before entering this ward" with one saying "Do not enter this nursery without picking up a baby".〔Karen R. pp. 20–21〕 In a series of studies published in the 1930s, psychologist Bill Goldfarb noted not only deficits in the ability to form relationships, but also in the IQ of institutionalised children as compared to a matched group in foster care.〔 In another study conducted in the 1930s, Harold Skeels, noting the decline in IQ in young orphanage children, removed toddlers from a sterile orphanage and gave them to "feeble-minded" institutionalised older girls to care for. The toddlers' IQ rose dramatically. Skeels study was attacked for lack of scientific rigour though he achieved belated recognition decades later.〔Karen R. pp. 18–22〕 René Spitz, a psychoanalyst, undertook research in the 1930s and '40s on the effects of maternal deprivation and ''hospitalism''. His investigation focused on infants who had experienced abrupt, long-term separation from the familiar caregiver, as, for instance, when the mother was sent to prison. These studies and conclusions were thus different from the investigations of institutional rearing. Spitz adopted the term ''anaclitic depression'' to describe the child's reaction of grief, anger, and apathy to partial emotional deprivation (the loss of a loved object) and proposed that when the love object is returned to the child within three to five months, recovery is prompt but after five months, they will show the symptoms of increasingly serious deterioration. He called this reaction to total deprivation "hospitalism". He was also one of the first to undertake direct observation of infants. The conclusions were hotly disputed and there was no widespread acceptance.〔Karen R. p. 25〕 During the years of World War II, evacuated and orphaned children were the subjects of studies that outlined their reactions to separation, including the ability to cope by forming relationships with other children. Some of this material remained unpublished until the post-war period and only gradually contributed to understanding of young children's reactions to loss. Bowlby, who, unlike most psychoanalysts, had direct experience of working with deprived children through his work at the London Child Guidance Clinic, called for more investigation of children's early lives in a paper published in 1940. He proposed that two environmental factors were paramount in early childhood. The first was death of the mother, or prolonged separation from her. The second was the mother's emotional attitude towards her child.〔Karen J. pp. 26–29〕 This was followed by a study on forty–four juvenile thieves collected through the Clinic. There were many problematic parental behaviours in the samples but Bowlby was looking at one environmental factor that was easy to document, namely prolonged early separations of child and mother. Of the forty-four thieves, fourteen fell into the category which Bowlby characterised as being of an "affectionless character". Of these fourteen, twelve had suffered prolonged maternal separations as opposed to only two of the control group. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Maternal deprivation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|