What consequences can result from precocious mother-child separation in the moments following birth?
How do we remedy an internal division to change our behaviour towards our own children?
What needs does body contact between mother and child address and what benefits does it bring?
It was in the 1850s that the first baby carriages appeared. Until that point the peasant classes usually carried their children, enabling them to move around and carry on with the multiple tasks necessary to earn their living. In more affluent families on the other hand, children were often separated from the mother and entrusted to a nurse who gave them milk and comfort. Entrusting one’s child to a maid was a sign of prosperity. When the baby carriage of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, was adapted to the requirements of the court, it quickly began appearing in well-off households who considered it an additional indicator of wealth. Gradually the practice of carrying babies was abandoned.
The precocious separation(1) of the newborn from their mother, common in our parts of the world for generations, has a fundamental influence on the infant’s future development. Such a separation immediately after birth, intervenes at the precise moment when imprinting should take place. Imprinting is the process of attachment and identification which occurs immediately after birth in all mammals, including humans. The phenomenon results from total sensory contact and triggers instincts of mutual recognition in mother and child which help the mother to adequately respond to her child's needs, allowing the infant to develop harmoniously. Following years of personal development and experience in body and emotional work, the Swiss therapist Willi Maurer is convinced that the mother-child bond is the very foundation of an individual’s harmonious development. He believes that we are still unaware of the far-reaching impact that the first moments of our life have on us and in particular, of the importance of physical contact with our mothers. A mother separated from her child describes this, “For years I felt a sensation of loss that I was unable to identify but which prevented me from fully feeling and living my maternal instinct.” The total confidence gained through imprinting, will allow the little girl to later resist the doctors who would recommend that she separates from her baby in the first moments after giving birth, when she herself becomes a mother.
At birth the human being has precise needs: to benefit from total sensory contact with their mother, a feeling of warmth and security that this closeness provides, to be carried and to hear her heartbeat (grasp reflex); to suckle, assuage hunger and thirst (sucking reflex); to recognise in the mother’s gaze and tender care that it is a unique being, worthy of all her love (reflection phenomenon). As the baby feels that meeting these needs is a question of survival, the baby expresses them noisily and energetically. “A child’s cries are from a biological point of view, its means of emitting an acoustic alarm signal, exactly as the small marsupial does when it has lost contact with its mother, the person who protects it...”(2) If parents respond with indifference the baby might be affected by these experiences later on and believe that it is pointless to express its needs. It might fall back on substitute solutions. For example a baby-bottle or a pacifier may replace the mother’s breast, and then a teddy-bear or any other transitional object (comfort blanket) could be used to fill the absence of physical contact. In adulthood some individuals may try to fill this childhood void through excessive consumption of medication, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. They may also try to fill this void by satisfying a compulsive need to possess, by excessively following fashion or by taking many holidays away to flee the daily greyness.
(1) Mother-child separation refers to the common practice of leaving an infant for only a very short time in its mother’s arms after birth, of entrusting it immediately to people who are strangers to it, of leaving it alone in a crib, if not in another room. The newborn consequently experiences deep abandonment feelings and death anxiety.
(2) Prof. Dr. Bernhard Hassenstein, Specialist in behavioral biology, University of Freiburg.
Bibliography at the end of the article.