How Babies Learn the Story of Separation
Babyhood is when you learn stories that guide your life.
Shutterstock/riggleton
Charles Eisenstein, in his book, The More Beautiful World Our Heart Knows is Possible, discusses how we are stuck in the dominant culture’s “story of separation.” The separation story has a long history going back to 1000 BCE when western cultures separated sacredness from Nature and from humanity, placing it only on a male god outside of Earth (Bellah, 1970). Nature and humanity were “fallen,” and only the male god should be honored and respected.
Cultural beliefs like these are not just something adults talk and think about. Cultural beliefs affect what adults do and how they interact with the rest of the world, including how they treat children.
The experiences a child has as a baby set up understandings about self, others and the world. These views are deeply embodied in the reactions the child’s body has, shaping automatic reactions and interpretations of life experience. Answers to existential questions, like Who am I? are formed in those preverbal years of life.
It turns out, however, that many of the assumptions of the dominant worldview and its separation story are established in early life, in the disconnection of unnestedness. The story of separation is seeded by babyhood experiences that violate our species evolved nest, such as being left alone, rarely touched, and left to cry.
Most of us, who have been raised in industrialized-capitalist cultures, carry the “separation story” in our biology, passed on for multiple generations through the parenting our parents and grandparents and we received.
The questions that early experiences answers are mostly not mentioned by Eisenstein because they are so fundamental to being alive. But in the industrialized-capitalistic world, we have forgotten how important it is to help babies answer those questions positively. The answers to the questions get under our skin, or in our neurobiology, and are hard to dislodge or change later.
Those who continue to live in communities of connectedness like our ancestors did over millions of years–like the wilder San Bushmen of today (Suzman, 2017)—nest their children continuously so there is never a sense of isolation or separation (Hewlett & Lamb, 2005). They provide the Evolved Nest. The San Bushmen and other nested communities around the world answer the existential questions differently from unnested communities. See the table below.
| Existential Questions | Responses from a Nested Babyhood | Responses from an Unnested Babyhood |
| Who am I? | I am an agent who can get my needs met when gently signaled. | I am a separate individual. |
| Where am I? | I exist in a caring community of changing arms, smells, play. | I exist in a distressing, lonely place. |
| What are those feelings I have? | My feelings are signals for response, and comforting response comes. | My feelings are worthless annoyances—nothing happens. |
| What is the world like? | The world is reliable and helpful, beautiful and fun. | The world is unreliable and often unhelpful, scary and frustrating. |
| How do I get along in the world? | I signal and receive responses. | I live on guard, hoping to manipulate others to get some needs met. |
| Why live? | I live for ongoing joyous connection, satisfying my curiosities and urge to play. | I’m not sure I want to live, existing always in despair. Best to escape. |
References
Bellah, R. (1970). Beyond belief. Harper & Row.
Hewlett, B. S., & Lamb, M. E. (2005). Hunter-gatherer childhoods: Evolutionary, developmental and cultural perspectives. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine.
Suzman, J. (2017). Affluence without abundance: The disappearing world of the Bushmen. New York: Bloomsbury.
RESOURCES
Kindred posts and podcasts on BABIES.
Watch the Breaking the Cycle short film below and find resources, including a film guide, Spanish and German versions, and discussion questions here.