Even fairly brief separation from a primary care giver has severe emotional effects on the child. Robertson and Bowlby (1952) studied young children who were separated from their mother for a period of time, often before she has gone into hospital. They found that there were 3 stages in the child’s response. This is called the protest-despair-detachment (PDD) model: 1. Protest – often very intense. The child cried much of the time, and seems panic stricken.
2. Despair – Involving a total loss of hope. The child is often apathetic and shows little interest in its surroundings. 3. Detachment – During which the child seems to behave in a less distressed way. If the mother re-appears during this stage, she is not responded to with any great interest. It used to be thought that children in the 3rd stage of detachment had adjusted fairly well to separation from their mother. However, it seems that the calm behaviour shown by the child often hides underlying distress. The indifference shown by the child when its mother reappears is a disguise for true feelings, but most children will re-establish and attachment to the mother over time.
However, it has been argued by Barrett (1997) that individual differences have Not been taken into account. Also, we should also ask whether it is inevitable that short-term separation will produce these negative affects. Evidence reported by Robertson and Robertson (1971) suggests that tit is not inevitable. They looked after a number of children who had been separated from their mothers, and took various steps to minimise any distress the children might experience.
First, they ensure that the children visited their home some time before the actual separation, so that they could become familiar with their new surroundings. Second, they did their best to provide children with the kind of daily routine with which they were familiar. Third, they discussed the children’s mothers with them. This approach proved successful with the children showing much less distress that do most separated children.
Hospitalisation Children can experience separation as a result of being hospitalised. In this time, the attachment bonds can be broken (deprivation). A study by Douglas (1975) analysed used data collected as a part of the National Survey of Health and Development, a longitudinal study of 5000 children born during one week in 1946. The children were assessed at regular intervals up to the age of 26.