Noncontinuous Mothering in Infancy and Development in Later Childhood1

On the strength of assertions which have been made about the effects of inadequate mothering, it might be hypothesized that, if maternal deprivation does occur, the children who experience it should reveal the results of that inadequacy in discriminable variations in personality structure and content. In the absence of such observable, discriminable variations in personality, any assumption of maternal deprivation seems unwarranted, regardless of the fact that unusual mothering conditions may actually have occurred. In an earlier report (5) a research design was described, the central objective of which was to ascertain both short-term and long-range effects on children of an unusual, noncontinuous mothering experience during infancy. The major condition of that unusual mothering experience was residence in a home management house on a university campus, prior to being placed in private adoptive homes. During the period of residence in the home management house, each infant's care was provided by many different mother figures, each having responsibility for the baby for a few days at a time. At the same time as the longitudinal study of these subjects has been going on, efforts have been made to locate children who resided in the home management houses over the past few years and to evaluate their present status in comparison with children who did not experience such an unusual mothering situation in infancy. One purpose for including this group of subjects in the over-all study is to make more meaningful any findings