Love and care
Much has been learnt over the last decades about the function of love and the consistency of care in a child's psychological development and fulfillment.
The importance of touch
© Jupiter
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” was something that my mother and many of her generation quoted to her children, and most people of my age were disciplined not only with words, actions, rewards and punishments, but with some kind of physical punishment.
To my mind the word spoil is a very dangerous one because most people confuse spoiling with loving, and no baby or child can have too much loving. The first introduction to loving that a newborn baby experiences is the touch of the mother's arms. The second is the sound of her voice. I do believe that babies “bond” to these two things. In other words they recognize the mother's touch, her smell and the sound of her voice as belonging to their carer, the person who feeds and takes an interest in them, soothes away discomfort and generally makes life happier and more pleasant.
One of the most important aspects of this loving relationship is touch and the first touches a baby experiences should be soft, gentle, welcoming and cushioning.
We are not the only animal to whom touch is important; it is important throughout the whole animal kingdom, as some controversial and rather moving animal experiments show. Some of the first of these were done with baby Rhesus Monkeys. They were divided into two groups, having been taken away from their mothers at a young age, but old enough to survive on their own. The groups were given two substitute “mothers”. One was a “wire mother”, which was simply the shape and body of a mother monkey made out of wire. The other was a “soft mother”: the wire body was covered in material such as lamb's wool.
For the first group, the wire mother provided food via a nipple attachment; for the second group, the soft mother did. The experimenters thought that the monkeys would prefer whichever mother had the food. However, it was found that the young monkeys clung to the soft mother whether it provided them with food or not, and only went to the wire surrogate occasionally to eat. Sometimes they were prepared to go without food in order to snuggle up to the soft mother, so great was their need for softness, comfort, and touching. In some intensive care units where premature babies are nurtured, the babies are put on soft, fluffy sheets because this makes the babies feel as though they are being touched. The astonishing fact is these babies thrive better and put on weight more quickly than a child who lies on a linen or cotton sheet.
The upshot of all this is very important for a parent. If you want your baby to be happy, to thrive and to put on weight, one of the most important things you can do for her is to cuddle, and cuddle, and give more cuddles. Take every opportunity to stroke, pat, touch and love your child through gestures. If you can accompany these touching movements with a soft, loving voice, a big smile and your face held 20-25cm (8-10in) away from your newborn baby, you will be giving her a flying start in life.
Love is not exclusive
Until quite recently the commonly held view of the mother-child bond was that it was exclusive. It was thought that a strong, healthy bond between mother and child was essential for a child's mental health, but more importantly that a child's care should be monopolized by one mother figure. It was also felt that a child was unable to form attachments to more than one person who was, of course, the mother. This placed a huge psychological burden on the mother and made her the subject of great pressure by everyone who cared to exert it, be it partner or family.
Research has shown that this is almost certainly not the case. Babies are not confined to a single bond. Once your baby has reached the stage of forming an attachment to anyone then she is probably capable of maintaining a number of attachments at the same time. As they grow up, most babies form specific attachments simultaneously - as many as five or more. By the time children are 18 months old, almost a third have formed attachments with neighbours and grandparents but, above all, with their fathers. Another aspect of the research has shown that being attached to several people at the same time does not mean that the baby has a shallower feeling towards each one. An infant's capacity for attachment is not like a cake that has to be cut. Love in babies has no limits.
Given this basis of a baby's ability to form attachments with several people, there is no reason why “mothering” can't be shared by several people. Furthermore, the mother need not be the biological mother. There's no evidence at all to suggest that firm attachments won't grow between children and unrelated adults who take on the parenting role by fostering or adoption, for instance. The belief that the mother, simply by virtue of being the biological mother, is uniquely capable of caring for her child is without foundation. There are no medical, physiological or biological reasons for confining childcare to women. In fact the argument in favour of equal sharing of parenting between both parents is irresistible.
Consistency of care
An infant can form multiple attachments and research has shown that such attachments depend more on the quality of the interaction than on its duration. Controversy about whether the mother has to be the infant's constant companion throughout each day is over. A minimum period of togetherness is desirable, but there is nothing that can be said about how much. It is the personal qualities that the adult brings to the interaction that are the most important. Provided that these can be given full play there is no reason why mother and baby should not spend a portion of the day apart (the mother at work for instance and the child in some kind of day-care arrangement that the family is comfortable with).
There is, however, one important proviso: that is the stability and quality of substitute care. If the people responsible for the child's care are constantly changing the child could well become disturbed. A child may not need uniformity of care, but she does need consistency of care. It's your job to make sure this is given if neither of you is going to stay at home.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 03.11.2010
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