John Bowlby/Archive 1 - Family Background

Family Background

Bowlby was born in London to an upper-middle-class family. He was the fourth of six children and was brought up by a nanny in the British fashion of his class at that time. His father, Sir Anthony Alfred Bowlby, first Baronet, was surgeon to the King's Household, with a tragic history: at age five, Sir Anthony's own father, Thomas William Bowlby, (John's grandfather) was killed while serving as a war correspondent in the Opium Wars.

Normally, Bowlby saw his mother only one hour a day after teatime, though during the summer she was more available. Like many other mothers of her social class, she considered that parental attention and affection would lead to dangerous spoiling of the children. Bowlby was lucky in that the nanny in his family was present throughout his childhood. When Bowlby was almost four years old, his beloved nanny, who was actually his primary caretaker in his early years, left the family. Later, he was to describe this as tragic as the loss of a mother.

At the age of seven, he was sent off to boarding school, as was common for boys of his social status. In his work Separation: Anxiety and Anger, he revealed that he regarded it as a terrible time for him. He later said, "I wouldn't send a dog away to boarding school at age seven". Because of such experiences as a child, he displayed a sensitivity to children’s suffering throughout his life. However, Bowlby did consider boarding schools appropriate for children aged eight and older, and wrote, "If the child is maladjusted, it may be useful for him to be away for part of the year from the tensions which produced his difficulties, and if the home is bad in other ways the same is true. The boarding school has the advantage of preserving the child's all-important home ties, even if in slightly attenuated form, and, since it forms part of the ordinary social pattern of most Western communities today, the child who goes to boarding-school will not feel different from other children. Moreover, by relieving the parents of the children for part of the year, it will be possible for some of them to develop more favorable attitudes toward their children during the remainder."

He married Ursula Longstaff, the daughter of a surgeon, on April 16, 1938, and they had four children, including (Sir) Richard Bowlby, who succeeded his uncle as third Baronet.

Bowlby died at his summer home on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.