Privation

Method: Longitudinal study of 65 children who had been placed in a residential nursery before they were four months old. They hadn't had the oppurtunity to form close attachments with any of their caregivers. By the age of four, some of the children had returned to their birth mothers, some had been adopted, and some stayed in the nursery.

Results: At 16 years old, the adopted group had strong family relationships, although compared to a conrol group of children from a 'normal' home envrironment, they had weaker peer relationships. Those who stayed in the nursery or who returned to their mothers showed poorer relationships with family and peers than those who were adopted.

Conclusion: Children can recover from early maternal privation if they are in a good quality, loving environment, although their social development may not be as good as children who have never suffered privation.

Evaluation: Natural exp so it had high ecological validity. Sample was quite small and more than 20 of the children couldn't be found at the end of the study, so it's hard to generalise the results. The results are supported by other studies, such as Rutter et al, who studied 111 Romanian orphans who were adopted by British families before they were 2. They were initially below normal development, by 4 years of age development had caught up, Support H&T that children can recover from deprivation if they have good quality care.