Maternal Care and Mental Health (with Bowlby)

No. The 1966 Schocken edition is a bound reprint that pairs two separate WHO publications: Bowlby's single-authored Maternal Care and Mental Health (1951) and the multi-authored symposium Deprivation of Maternal Care (1962), to which Ainsworth contributed one chapter. Bowlby and Ainsworth never co-authored a book. As one scholarly assessment notes, Bowlby wrote most of his papers and books alone and did not make Ainsworth a co-author. The 'with Bowlby' framing reflects the physical binding of the two texts in the 1966 edition, not intellectual collaboration on a single work. Ainsworth's contribution was independent, though Bowlby read and endorsed it.

Ainsworth authored the sixth and longest review article in Deprivation of Maternal Care, titled 'The Effects of Maternal Deprivation: A Review of Findings and Controversy in the Context of Research Strategy.' According to a contemporaneous review in Nature, Bowlby had read this paper and agreed with it, so it may be taken as representing his present views on maternal deprivation. Ainsworth's chapter systematically assessed all studies and critiques that had followed the 1951 monograph, as well as the five other articles in the symposium. The WHO's French edition notes that pressing commitments prevented Bowlby from writing the piece himself, and Ainsworth's communication fully substituted for his own statement.

Ainsworth argues that the controversy surrounding maternal deprivation stems primarily from definitional imprecision, not from empirical disconfirmation. The term had been used to cover too many distinct phenomena—separation, rejection, institutional care, inadequate mothering—making the hypothesis difficult to test and easy to overextend. She reviews the evidence and proposes that researchers specify what is being deprived, in what circumstances, and with what developmental outcomes. This emphasis on precision anticipates her later methodological approach in Uganda and Baltimore, where she moved from global questions about deprivation to specific, observable patterns of caregiver responsiveness and attachment behavior.

The 1966 Schocken Books edition (New York, 357 pages) reprints two WHO publications in a single volume: Bowlby's Maternal Care and Mental Health, originally WHO Monograph Series No. 2 (1951), and Deprivation of Maternal Care: A Reassessment of Its Effects, originally WHO Public Health Papers No. 14 (1962, 165 pages). Libraries catalog the bound volume under Bowlby's name with Ainsworth as an associated author. This editorial decision created the misleading impression of a joint work, when in fact the two texts were separate publications addressing related but distinct questions: Bowlby's original thesis and the subsequent critical reassessment of it.

The 1962 symposium marked a pivotal moment in attachment theory's maturation. It assembled critiques from psychiatry (Prugh, Harlow), sociology (Wootton), anthropology (Mead), and developmental psychology (Ainsworth), subjecting Bowlby's global thesis to interdisciplinary scrutiny. Wootton questioned the evidence base and policy implications; Mead challenged the universality of the mother-child bond model; Ainsworth synthesized and redirected the research agenda toward precision. Bowlby's endorsement of Ainsworth's chapter signaled his willingness to revise the thesis in response to criticism. This process of qualification and specification—rather than abandonment—allowed attachment theory to survive the 1960s critiques and become the dominant framework in developmental psychology.

The edition illuminates a critical phase in their collaboration. As Inge Bretherton's history of attachment theory documents, Bowlby and Ainsworth's collaboration began in 1950 and entered its most creative phase after Bowlby formulated the initial blueprint and Ainsworth conducted her Uganda study. The 1962 symposium was a transitional moment: Ainsworth was still working within Bowlby's maternal deprivation framework but was already moving toward the more precise, observational approach that would define her independent contribution. By endorsing her reassessment, Bowlby effectively acknowledged that his 1951 thesis required the kind of specification Ainsworth would later provide through the Strange Situation and the secure base concept.