[back] Violence Bonding (attachment)
Bonding or Violence: An Introduction
A baby's developing body and brain mirror and reflect, lifelong, the
emotional-sensory environment provided by its first primary relationship, that
is with its mother. The Origins of Love & Violence
take root in this first, primary sensory environment. What we call "affectional
bonding" or nurturing, or its absence-- very early in life--structures the
developing brain to interpret the world and its relationships as peaceful,
pleasurable and loving or hostile, painful and violent depending on trust or
anxiety experienced in this first relationship.
The biological processes involved in the Origins of Love & Violence are no
longer a mystery. During pregnancy a mother's body provides the sensory
stimulation; the taste, touch, smell, sight, sound, and the pleasure or pain
associated with these sensations that shape her baby's brain. The state of the
mother's own body, in relationship to her environment, safe and nurturing, or
unsafe and anxious, is mirrored in the baby's developing brain and nervous
system. If mother feels safe and is herself nurtured, her baby's brain, with its
creative capacities, will reap the benefit. If mother feels unloved or
unsupported, is threatened, anxious, and fearful, nature will give greater
emphasis to her baby's ancient core brain, with its defensive and survival
systems, at the expense of evolution's newer creative capacities.
What begins in pregnancy continues and expands at birth. And nature intends
that direct intimate contact with mother's body will provide the pleasurable
stimulation and emotional nurturing, the essential nutrients needed for her baby
to develop a normal and healthy brain and nervous system.
During pregnancy, birth and beyond, if not interfered with, nature locks the
mother and baby's biorhythms, heart frequencies, hormonal balances, sleep
patterns and a thousand other living systems into reciprocal bonded patterns.
The baby provides the precise stimulus for mother to open and develop new
capacities, and mother does the same for her baby. Their language is non-verbal;
sensation and feeling. Nature assumes this bond will develop and places baby
close to the mother's body and breast for just this reason, and for an extended
period of time. Interfering with this close, intimate, skin-to-skin contact
prevents a vital exchange of sensory experiences, nutrients and information
required for normal and healthy brain development.
The absence of what we call bonding is neglect and abuse. Recently
researchers at the McLean Hospital identified four types of permanent brain
abnormalities caused by early childhood abuse and neglect. These and many other
studies confirm what James W. Prescott, Ph.D.,
and associates discovered in the 1960's and 1970's; that lack of affectionate,
intimate contact between mothers and infants during the most sensitive periods
of brain growth may result in permanent brain abnormalities associated with
juvenal and adult patterns of depression, substance abuse, eating disorders,
aggression and violence.
Today the mirrored-reciprocal relationship we call bonding is threatened.
Mothers are not valued, nurtured or supported by the culture. Drugs and
technological birth practices routinely separate mothers and babies during the
most sensitive bonding period. Single parent families, an euphemism for single
moms, without the support, mentoring, and nurturing of extended families and
communities, routinely place the majority of infants and young children in
institutional childcare for extended periods of time, shortly after birth. Lack
of initial bonding, institutional childcare, and social pressures, such as work
schedules and welfare reform prevent most mothers from bonding with and
breast-feeding their babies.
Nothing can quite replace the loving touch and nurturing a mother provides for
her baby, and through her touch she nurtures all of humanity. And what about
fathers? It is the primary role of males to protect and support the women they
love, so they can nurture all our children.
Maria Montessori claimed that humankind abandoned in this early formative period
becomes the worst threat to its own survival. To betray this essential need for
nurturing which means loving, pleasurable touch and body contact, especially in
males, who are biologically most vulnerable early in life, results in increasing
numbers of juvenile and adult males who batter, abuse and rape females, the true
source of the nurturing they need. And this cycle of violence spreads throughout
society and the world.
What you will find in this section, Bonding & Violence, is the historical
research, the politics, interviews, past publications and copies of rare footage
documenting how an absence of nurturing, affection, playful movement and breast
feeding results in a variety of brain abnormalities associated with depression,
aggression, impulse dyscontrol, substance abuse, obesity and violence.
Some of the information is highly technical, archived here for historical and
research purposes. All is accessible and may be of interest to interested
parents, educators, health and child care professionals.
In 1952 John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden:
"The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt--and there is the story of mankind."
Dr. Prescott's pioneering research found here explains the Origins of Love & Violence, dramatically, clearly.
|
[2002] The Origins of Love & Violence: An Overview by James W. Prescott, Ph.D.