Love. Historically it has been the exclusive domain of musicians, poets, lovers and philosophers. Love was associated within the context of sentimentality and romanticism, certainly not within the verifiable realm of hard science or social research. But in the latter decades of the twentieth century science began forging into the depths of the heart and emerged with material that is sure to cause a quantum shift in how we interpret ourselves as human beings.
The research evidence is far from obscure or soft. There are many perspectives from which evidence about love has been scientifically examined, all well documented and published. Many pioneers have contributed to the understanding that love is a brain gestalt, created, nurtured, developed and supported by close intimate physical and emotional contact, especially in the baby and toddler stages of life. It develops through a process called bonding and attachment . Children’s earliest experiences of birth, affection, touch, movement, breastfeeding and physical closeness all profoundly influence their ability throughout life to manage emotion, experience pleasure and empathy and to appreciate beauty. How we are cared for and loved affects the early ‘wiring’ of our brain in infancy because it translates into neurological patterns that set the patterns of our behaviour and how we relate to others and ourselves — for the rest of our lives. Although this information is widely understood and unquestioned in some academic and professional circles, it is filtering all too slowly down into a highly defensive and sceptical public.
Why does such filtering creep so slowly, given that the public sector represents those who have most to gain by such research? After nearly three years of disseminating the science of love, its various forms and perspectives, in byronchild , and immersing myself in the resulting responses to that material, I have been alarmed to see the political agendas that wedge themselves between us and our potential to change our societies for the better. Love has been politicised. From the political right to left, from feminism to fathers’ rights, wealthy to poor, Green to conservative, the cultural polarities claim their rights, their choices and their power on the battlefield of early childhood by passionately dismissing a whole world of information that could radically change our future.
As we warm up to the Australian election, both political parties have recently released their Early Years policy approaches. Sadly they both reveal the state of our collective ignorance and denial of emotional aspects of early childhood, and the desire to skip vital information to win votes, more than these documents. In reading a transcript of Labor Leader Mark Latham’s recent speech to the 2004 World Organisation for Early Childhood Education Conference (www.alp.oprg.au/media/0704/20008066.html), I was both heartened and deeply disturbed. While he brings a progressive, inclusive and intelligent approach to the need for an effective Early Years campaign by asserting the economic advantage of investing in the early years and need for a family-friendly society, he completely misses the mark in just how those early years are to be treated. He correctly states that 75% of a child’s brain develops in the first five years, yet he falls into the tragic blunder of confusing development with education, asserting the need for preschool and childcare ‘learning programs’, while he never mentions, or includes in his agenda, the importance of such ingredients as the support of birthing experiences which are as natural as possible, good mothering, full-term breastfeeding, close skin-to-skin contact, intimate touch and holding, co-sleeping — the very foundations of optimal early development. And why should he be expected to? He never hears about these facts from his constituents — us.
He campaigns hard for reading to our children but fails to recognise that children from zero to five are benefiting more from the loving physical contact of sitting in the lap of their mother or father during the reading than from the reading itself. He says, ‘The key to a creative, ideas-based society is education,’ but he is speaking of this with regard to infants and children under five. At that age, experiences of loving relationships in a setting of secure attachment and bonding are the keys to a creative, ideas-based society, not formal ‘education’. The risks of formal education in the early years is increasingly documented. David Elkind, author of Miseducation – Preschoolers at Risk and The Hurried Child, points out that the desire to create ‘superkids’ by an intense curriculum when they should be playing, is resulting in pandemic stress disorders in young children. Education, the country, the economy is lost without children who have first developed a sense of connectedness, empathy, beauty, belonging — in short, love.
Latham states, ‘Learning doesn’t start the first day of school. It starts the first day of life.’ Well, OK, but what they are learning the first day of life cannot be read in a book, nor shown on a flash card. It is done intimately in the arms of loving mothers. Regrettably, this has become a very politically loaded statement. I have used the word mother deliberately, and not father or caregiver, because, for a start, it is mothers who breastfeed.
This kind of public message of Latham’s is dangerous. It’s a wolf-policy in sheep’s clothing. It’s a road paved with good intentions going straight to cultural hell. Why? Because it appears to publicly endorse the view that children could and should spend more time away from their mothers and fathers, to be in early learning centres. It can suggest that the most important time spent with a young child is productive ‘educational’ time. And worse, it publicly ignores the mass of scientific evidence about attachment and bonding…so much talk about early childhood, and nothing about those vital facts! That is like speaking about the Olympics without the athletes. While much of Latham’s policy is unquestioningly supportive of parents and children, missing the mark by a few degrees now will cost us much, later on.
In reading the Liberal government’s recently released Draft Framework of the National Agenda for Early Childhood (www.facs.gov.au/internet/facsinternet.nsf/family/early_childhood.htm), Larry Anthony MP, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, has done little to address the facts behind optimal brain development. he seems to prefer the usual feminist–advocated route of more childcare centres and the need for ‘appropriate nutrition and stimulation during the early years’. Next to even Latham’s statement it is quite pathetic. However, he at least mentions the word breastfeeding in the document. Minister Anthony, too, mistakes development for education and makes frequent reference to ‘a good start in life’ (like breakfast cereal?) without saying what that is or how it can be achieved. His agenda is all about being politically correct in order to win votes. Political correctness was born of fear, fear of losing votes, fear of losing control, it was never born of wisdom. Words like literacy, learning and education are great political bones to throw to voters, and they please the powerful childcare and early education lobby groups. These words are not confrontational and have nothing essential to do with very early childhood, unless we are speaking about the ‘education’ of the public to know what creates a peaceful, benevolent society.
Yet it is understandable that both parties resist using terms like breastfeeding, mothering, intimate at-home care, because they risk upsetting one of the largest and most powerful and vocal advocacy groups, the equality feminists (see Peter Cook’s article; Feminism, Childcare and Family Mental Health p.28). Equality feminists (in contrast to liberation or maternal feminists) tend to distort any intelligent debate about early childhood development by asserting that their rights as women are more important than anything else. As a liberation feminist myself, my critique is that the equality feminists have run amok. It might be our right to choose whether or not we pick up our crying baby or let him cry it out, whether or not we breastfeed and for how long, or whether or not we choose to work fulltime while our baby is eight weeks old and put him in long daycare, but we need to know that the effects of these choices will be etched on our child’s brain forever. That is the most important inescapable fact.
I am amazed at how many women retort to articles on bonding research if they are written by male professionals with statements such as, ‘How can a man tell me I should breastfeed?’ or ‘I’d like to see a man have birth and not want drugs!’ Or for that matter, a man’s response when it was written by a female author; ‘How can a woman speak about circumcision!’ But optimal development based on the science of love , is not a gender issue. It is not about taking away women’s choices or men’s rights, it is about all our rights when we are babies and very young children and empowering everyone’s choices to be more reflective of our dynamic interconnected role as a human being.
The glue that maintains the false politicisation of love is parental anxiety and guilt. We feel both blamed by this research and marginalised, undervalued and unsupported. We find ourselves in a culture at odds with our ability to make wise choices for our children and we may feel rage at the ensuing collapse of that ability. Under these circumstances we are destined to fail, as there is no way that we as parents can optimally bond with our children within a society that is determined to keep us apart. Many structures seem to be created to keep mothers isolated (hence the desire to work even if they don’t have to) and to keep fathers away and all of us working harder for less.
Given all this, rather than feel the apprehension and perhaps anger that arise when we discover what is required of us for our children to develop optimally, many people resort to denigrating the research. ‘It is too idealistic!’ we feign, or ‘What about women that must work because they are poor?’ or ‘What about women who can’t , for medical reasons, breastfeed?’ Of course these situations arise, but does that mean we must dismiss factual information? Do we deny that that exercising three times a week is optimal, because there are those who are bedridden? Of course not. Denigrating the research, we unwittingly dumb down our public officials, and then use their public statements — which echo our denigration — to uphold the lie we hold within. We can no longer blame them for poor public policy — they only parrot what they think we want to hear.
I was recently inspired by a woman who plans to have her baby born by a Caesarian-section. She has had birth complications in the past, so this is her safest option. However, because she knows and understands bonding theory, she is working with her doctor to ‘deliver’ the baby herself on the operating table, lifting her child immediately on to her chest — skin to skin. She also, for medical reasons, found she could not breastfeed her first child, so she instead held him close, skin to skin, when she bottle-fed him. She is using her knowledge to empower herself within a potentially disempowering situation. We all have situations like these that pit us against our ability to choose optimally for ourselves and for our children. The key is in not resigning into guilt, but doing what we can, armed with good research.
We may contribute to our evolutionary stagnation if we disregard the powerful body of research that reveals to us the vital keys towards creating a more peaceful society, at a time when humanity must invent radically new strategies for survival. The only way to release love from perpetual political suspension and free up intelligent debate so as to foster creative change, is for ordinary people like ourselves to take the power back into our own hands by becoming informed and putting aside our agenda of protecting ourselves against the discomfort such research brings. We must bear the discomfort and disappointment that can ensue because we live in a society that doesn’t facilitate our ability to parent optimally. Rather than withdraw into guilt we must use the power of that discomfort to propel us into social and political action and insist that our public officials help us create a truly family-friendly society.
Editor’s note: Readers will have noticed that our cover price has increased to $8.95. To have continued at the previous price was unsustainable. We operate under strict, self-imposed advertiser standards: We do not accept advertising from companies whose products or services are not in alignment with the byronchild mission . This of course limits our revenue sources but is essential if we are to maintain our integrity as a non corporate-driven publication. We wish to provide a magazine that is free of the usual propaganda and advertiser driven content generally associated with child or parenting magazines. Our subscription price however, will remain the same, giving subscribers an increased and attractive discount. We hope you will continue to find yourself supported and stimulated by byronchild.