Contact-comfort & a secure-base.

It all begins at the very beginning. It really does! Babies who are born into an environment which provides them with loving, physical contact have their brains wired in a whole different way from those who do not have the same fortune. There is plenty of medical literature delivering overwhelming evidence for such notion. Take the infamous case of the late 80’s Romanian orphans, or even the astounding kangaroo mother care (the skin-contact approach that saves the lives of premature babies).

However, this knowledge has not always been agreed upon, quite the contrary. Names like Sigmund Freud and John B. Watson were amongst those who advocated parents to stand aloof from their children. In 1928 Watson went as far as stating ‘never hug and kiss your children, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight’. Although psychoanalysts and behaviourist disagreed on what each other said, their argument for promoting such approach towards infants converged as they maintained that love would rather spoil the children as well as weakening them for the hardship of adult life. Freud, after all, stated that the only reason children were attached to their caregivers was because the latter readily met their basic biological necessities (feed them, burp them etc...).

Not only did John Bowlby disagree with it all but also made a little mock out of such notion calling the explanation given by the psychoanalysts and behaviourists ‘cupboard love’. Bowlby turned to ethological studies to make sense of the bond that rises between infants and their mothers. He, consequently, concluded that very much like in other animals the baby-mother relationship is a result of an innate predisposition - an evolved behaviour of an organism that promotes its success in survival and reproduction. This was, nonetheless, when his problems began. To prove the notion of Freud and Watson wrong, Bowlby found himself in need of strong evidence to support his findings. Then, Harry Harlow entered the picture.

In the late 50’s Harlow carried out studies on rhesus macaques (monkeys), which provided overwhelming evidence that explained why the bond between a baby and his primary caregiver is not only a matter of satisfying basic biological necessities. Harlow proceeded to manufacture a fake `mother` which he called the wire mother, which carried a baby-bottle where milk was readily available. In parallel to this, Harlow also assembled a cosy mother made of terry-cloth. When placed side by side inside the baby monkey`s cage the infant animal would go to the wire mother to feed, but really spend most of his time clinging to the terry cloth mother. What is more, for further tests, when the wire-mother was removed from the cage the baby monkey showed little to no distress; however, contrarily, whenever the terry cloth mother was taken away, the little macaque became very upset and restless. Such findings resulted in what is known in psychology as contact-comfort (warmth and affection).

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the findings resulted from further experiments Harlow proceeded to conduct, the studies that found the importance a secure-base (someone they can count on) has for the healthy upbringing of children. The ethics of such experiments are most definitely questionable, and is very unlikely scientists would get away with similar procedures nowadays; still, there are those who prefer to look at the importance of the findings as they served as a body of evidence to change old attitudes and child-rearing policies. The study consisted of leaving a baby-monkey in a room full of toys. Here the infant animal’s behaviour was observed under two circumstances; one when he was left alone in the room, and two, when one of the mothers was present. It turned out that when left alone the baby monkey would just curl up in a frightened state and remained there; but, when in the presence of a mother, he would playfully explore the toys and the room whilst going back to the mother from time to time, or whenever he felt afraid. There are those who argue that the results gathered from studies conducted in nonhuman animals should not be fully applied to humans. Yet, when looking at the evolutionary scale a similar pattern of baby-parent bonding is present across species. Consequently, such behavioural patterns lead researchers to make inferences about human attachment.

It is widely known today that individuals with high E.I are more likely to endure life and obtain a more successful outcome. To raise confident, strong-minded children, therefore, an ambient filled with affection, happiness, and above all, understanding is paramount. This will build the foundations for the full, balanced development of the infant´s personality.