Maternal Deprivation - Influence On Institutionalised Care

Influence On Institutionalised Care

The practical effects of the publication of Maternal Care and Mental Health were described in the preface to the WHO 1962 publication Deprivation of Maternal Care: A Reassessment of its Effects as "almost wholly beneficial" with reference to widespread changes in the institutional care of children.

The practice of allowing parents frequent visiting to hospitalised children became the norm and there was a move towards placing homeless children with foster carers, rather than in institutions, and a move towards the professionalisation of alternative carers. In hospitals, the change was given added impetus by the work of social worker and psychoanalyst James Robertson who filmed the distressing effects of separation on children in hospital and collaborated with Bowlby in making the 1952 documentary film A Two-Year Old Goes to the Hospital.

According to Michael Rutter, the importance of Bowlby's initial writings on "maternal deprivation" lay in his emphasis that children's experiences of interpersonal relationships were crucial to their psychological development and that the formation of an ongoing relationship with the child was as important a part of parenting as the provision of experiences, discipline and child care. Although this view was rejected by many at the time, the argument focussed attention on the need to consider parenting in terms of consistency of caregivers over time and parental sensitivity to children's individuality and it is now generally accepted. Bowlby's theory sparked considerable interest and controversy in the nature of early relationships and gave a strong impetus to what Mary Ainsworth described as a "great body of research" in what was perceived as an extremely difficult and complex area.