„Now, don’t speak ill of you parents, you always had enough food and clothes to wear.“ I still get that enabling talk today. Back in the 1950s that was indeed the prominent attitude on raising children. The nature of the mother-infant bond was little understood and not only in the USA it was costume to avoid close body contact and hugs specially with boys. Harry Harlows findings about affection and love being necessary for healthy child development was therefore surprising at the time.
Harry Harlow publication „The nature of love“ from 1957 was painful for me to read. Separating baby monkeys from their mothers only hours after birth, Harlow examined how the isolation affected them. In an interview he said, he has no compassion for his moneys. Given my own experience with neglect, I felt for those monkey that have suffered and died. Nevertheless, what he found makes a lot of sense to me.
The hypothesis was that the mother-infant bond is reenforced by breastfeeding: Meaning: when the baby is hungry or thirsty, it gets fed by the mother and so it learns to love its mother.
Harlow left his monkey babies with two options of surrogate mothers (See picture below):
1. Wire-mother: monkey shaped wire providing milk
2. Cloth-mother: monkey shaped wire covered with a cloth and a heating patch
What he found was that the baby monkey didn’t spend more time than necessary with the wire-mother. Proving the point that simply feeding a baby is not enough to form love. For the mother-infant bond to form it needs comfort and body contact.
In further tests these monkey’s fear and anxiety response in unknown situations was examined. Placed into a new room they were presented with an unknown noisy toy. When the cloth-mother was present the monkeys would venture out to explore but always return to the cloth-mother as a source of security. In absece of the mother, they monkeys would often freeze and cower on the floor, not going near the noisy toy. This shows that lack of mother-infant bond makes fearful children. I talk about my fear of blood since I was a child in When I see BLOOD – I can’t keep FEAR at bay. Interestingly, my narcissistic mother refused to comfort me when I was in fear as a child. Leaving me in a freezing response. That ensured that I never went out much, which served her well, for abandonment is a narcissists worst fear.
In additional experiments with monkeys raised with only a wire-mother or a cloth-mother, Harlow noticed psychosomatic effects on the monkey’s gut health. The wire-mother monkeys and the cloth-mother monkey drank the same amount of milk. However, Harlow observed that monkey raised by wire-mothers had softer stool. It is also true for people that struggle with their mental health often have problems with their gut health. I explored this topic further in Brain – to – Gut & THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
In his publication Harlow tells an anecdote that upon hearing about his research a lady exclaimed „Now I know what’s wrong with me.“. I too identify with the wire-mother monkeys and although I find the experiments unethical they shine a light upon the things that happened in my live. After decades of research, we know that the hormone oxytocin is an important agent in forming the mother-infant bond. I explain this further in BOND with a DOG – if your parents wouldn’t be there for you.
The take home message is that providing food for children is simply not enough. If that isn’t common sense this scientific evidence shell shut up those people and family members that enabled my wire-parents.
