Privation

Privation is where no attachment bond has been formed so there is no opportunity for attachments to form. It is different to deprivation, as it is where there has been no attachment figure to start off with. This is often harder to study as even when attachment figures are bad influences on the child they still have an attachment figure, whereas children who have suffered privation have not had this bond at all. It is known as the 'forbidden experiment' as this is immoral and unethical to test if you wanted to condition someone to be raised with privation. In the rare case that an infant has suffered with privation future relationships are said to be much more affected than those who have simply just been deprived.
Studies that are of the most interest to me are those of feral children, these are children who have been abandoned and raised by packs of dogs for which their behaviours and norms have changed to copy those of the dogs. This is often used by behaviourist psychologists as it is easier to argue that role models and people in your environment influence your behaviour as opposed to a biological or evolutionary perspective. Children such as Oxana and Aveyron have been studied and attempts to rehabilitate them into society and experiments in helping them learn normal human behaviours have been carried out.
Curtiss who famously studied the case of Genie a feral child found that severe privation has permanent irreversible effects as attempts to change her behaviours were effective but only to a small extent, she never fully overcame her behaviours and tendencies to which she was brought up with. On the other hand Koluchova 1991 found that Czechoslovakian twin boys overcame any negative effects of being neglected and lived normal lives in education as well as both raising families.
Romanian orphan studies have been very useful in studying privation, as the sample size is so large it has allowed several children to be studied, these children were living in inhumane conditions, whilst being malnourished, having no toys and having minimal social interaction causing devastating effects. These orphanages were found and it caused a public outcry with many people in the UK adopting the children and taking them out of such inhumane conditions. Many studies took place which were longitudinal to see the effects on the rest of these infants lives. Kreppner er al 1999 studied 104 children who were adopted before the age of 2 and found that these children has a lower frequency of pretend play and a lower ability to appreciate other peoples' mental states. This is supported by the work of Rutter et al 2007 who found that these children had quasi- autistic like symptoms such as communication difficulties and stereotyped behaviours.
The problem with using Romanian orphanages when studying privation is that the results are difficult to generalise as even with the huge sample that was used there is also a huge variation in individual differences, the level of care and socialisation must effectively be studied in the families that these children were adopted into, however most research suggests some long term damage taking place when privation has occured.

Deprivation

Deprivation occurs when an attachment bond is formed and then broken. This is often thought to have psychologically damaging affects on infants that have been deprived, particularly those under the age of two as theorised by psychologists such as Bowlby.
Robertson and Robertson argued that the short term effects of deprivation lead to three stages, firstly of protest( the child refusing to separate from the attachment figure), then Despair(where the child would feel abandoned and be distressed) and finally detachment (where the infant would lose the attachment bond and show little emotion to others). Bowlby studied deprivation as well as privation, through his famous case study of 44 thieves he concluded that maternal deprivation led to delinquency, this is often considered when studying criminals as his work revolutionised the way many approach attachment and in particular deprivation. He also argued that repeated separation in an infant leads to an insecure attachment type being formed which has consequences for later development.
Belsky 88 studied the effects of day care on attachment types and deprivation. Through meta-analysis ( using data from a range of studies) he found that out of 464 children, the children who spent less than 20 hours per week in day care had 26% with an insecure attachment type and those spending more than 20 hours per week in day care with 41% having an insecure attachment type. Through his conclusions that day care had negative affects on attachment types, many reduced the amount of hours they had their child in day care for. This changed the way many treated their children, with mothers choosing not to work to spend more time with their children, it became almost a moral panic for parents as they felt responsible for how their children's future relationships turned out. Arguably the result of these attachment types could be due to specific day care centres. Not all day care centres may be damaging, some may provide a more adequate socialisation process for infants than parents themselves. Creps and Vernon-Feagans found that infants starting daycare before the age of six months were more sociable when older. On a personal note, I dont think day care is too damaging, if the infant is happy and is socialising with many other people possitively then surely future relationships can only be successful.