Can You “Spoil” a Baby?

I hear regularly from parents who are conflicted by the advice they get from family members to let babies cry, that parents should ignore their instincts to respond compassionately to their babies’ needs. And I can’t tell you how many times I hear American adults generally worry about spoiling a baby if, for example, you pick them up when they signal a need.

The idea of keeping babies from receiving tender care has been an infection of the American mind for almost two centuries according to psychoanalyst Ian Suttie (1935) who called it a cultural “taboo on tenderness.” Early parenting book writers emphasized a cool, detached parenting orientation (e.g., Luther Emmet Holt, 1935) even by scientists (e.g., John Watson, 1928), discouraging affectionate care. But science advocacy has changed, showing that affectionate care is vital for healthy development (Field, 1995; Montagu, 1986).

Researchers have been emphasizing the importance of parent-to-child attachment and child-to-parent attachment since mid-20th century. John Bowlby (1982) is most associated with both concepts. Mothers typically have a caregiving attachment that is triggered at birth if not before, unless interfered with by medicalized birth practices such as separation from the newborn.

Infants develop attachment to mother or primary caregiver over the first months of life. Secure attachment is associated with positive child outcomes like cooperation, happiness and self-esteem (Sroufe et al., 2005). Insecure attachment is associated with various social problems and represents the social neurobiology of the brain that is less than ideal for getting along with others.

Warm responsiveness and consistent presence of the primary caregiver is associated with measures of secure attachment. Unresponsive and inconsistent presence is associated with measurable insecure attachment (of various kinds depending on what kind of miscare accrued). Insecure attachment has been rising in the USA (Konrath et al., 2011), indicating that the early care being provided is not conducive to secure attachment development.

I have reviewed several clinicians’ emphasis on early tender care, which they emphasized after they noted in their patients linkages of early infant care to later physical and mental health. Taking a research physician’s viewpoint, Dr. Margaret Ribble (1943) found that infant needs are best met by mother love. Dr. D.W. Winnicott (1987) gives us the therapist’s viewpoint in discussing “good enough mothering” along with Dr. Weil (1992) who emphasized the need babies have for empathic care. During World War II, Dr. Moloney (1949) saw similarities in Nazi and American child raising and contrasted the poor mental health of Americans with the amazingly good health of Okinawans devastated by bombings, linking the differences to early life care.

Neuroscience, clinical science, developmental science all point to the need to meet babies’ needs generously when they have them. This is sometimes called attachment parenting, which is based on our species’ ancestral or primal parenting and similar to the evolved nest practices (which are more extensive and lifelong). This means the caregiver builds a reliable bond between them and the child from the first moments of life. This builds good physical and mental health as well as sociality and self-confidence.

So let’s address some of the discouraging comments adults make to parents and quote some of the aforementioned professionals’ responses.

Doesn’t too much attention spoil babies?

Dr. Margaret Ribble replies:

“It is obviously true that unwise attention prolongs dependency and thus spoils a baby. But mother love is a good deal like food; we do not stop giving it because the child may get too much or the wrong kind. It has to be expressed regularly so that the child expects; a little at a time, and frequently, is the emotional formula. When it is given in this way independence, rather than dependence, is fostered. For independence is the outgrowth of a feeling of security and completeness, whereas the deep dependency of the first months of life is a natural biological condition which characterizes babies, and not a trait which has been produced by too much care.” (1943, pp. 13-14)

Instead, and as attachment researchers have noted, consistent responsiveness to the deep needs of babies by familiar caregivers is vital:

“Assurance comes with inner growth but only if this is accompanied by love which must not only be abundant but consistent. It cannot be given to the child simply because the mother happens to feel in the mood. Babies become demanding when they are given a great deal of attention and then deprived of it. The art of mothering is to discover and satisfy the particular need of the individual child.” (Ribble, 1943, p. 14)

“A competent mother, interposed between the newborn infant and the hostile environment, can hold back most of the weight of the world. Provided this protection, the child gradually grows in strength. He finally acquires his own means of neutralizing external obstacles. He eventually becomes an individual confident of his own resources.” (Moloney p. 206)

Attending to a baby’s needs is not spoiling them but assisting them in getting themselves together. A good enough mother doesn’t just pick up a baby, she “gathers him together” (Winnicott, 1987, p. 43); she holds and treats the baby with kindness and tenderness.

What is the opposite of nurturing care and a calm child?

Dr. Moloney gives us some insights:

“The demanding child is the product of frightened, authoritative parents. A child who is afraid of his own maturation drives, because his parent has broken his spirit, never loses an unconscious awareness of the seething rebellion that arises from such an insult. He feels humiliated for having surrendered his birthright. Yet he feels afraid that the inner normal maturative drives, reinforced by the rage due to self-effacement, will break their bonds. For both reasons, the rage becomes more intense—a rage which must be suppressed by invoking an intracorporeal image of the parental restricting authority. Such a fierce internal tension, denied its natural outlet, often explodes at an individual who has occasioned no provocation. Often the tension drains itself through psychosomatic short circuits, ruining the vital organs of the body (Moloney, 1949, pp. 341-342).

“Children emotionally warped in early childhood by being subjected to traumata, at a time when they are too young and too helpless to integrate the experience, develop into fearful, unstable, and infantile adults. They frequently overcompensate for their fears with aggressiveness. Insecure, they develop neurotic techniques of mastery. They become demanding and selfish. They often become the bullies who start fights. And nations, comprise of such bullies, develop as bully nations that start wars” (Moloney, 1949, p. 314).

Winnicott (1987, p. 86) puts the desperation of a baby poetically:

“Behind [baby’s] needs lies the fact that babies are liable to the most severe anxieties that can be imagined. If left for too long (hours, minutes) without familiar and human contact, they have experiences which we can only describe by such words as:

Going to pieces,

falling for ever,

dying and dying and dying,

losing all vestige of hope of the renewal of contacts.

It is good for adults to understand what a baby feels when uncomforted!

General Advice: Pay attention to the subtle needs of the baby (0-3 years) and satisfy them kindly.

Go to EvolvedNest.org for a 28-day daily guide to tender baby care.

What Happened To Mothering? Series

• Part 1: Mother Love Used to Matter

• Part 2: What Is “Good Enough Mothering” of a Baby?

• Part 3: Why Provide Empathic Care for Infants?

• Part 4: Disbelieving the Importance of Mothering

• Plus: The Roots of Pathology: Authoritarianism Towards Babies

REFERENCES

Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books

Field, T. (1995). Touch in early development. New York: Psychology Press.

Holt, L.E. (1935). The Care and feeding of Children: A catechism for the use of mothers and nurses, 15th ed. NY: Applegate.

Konrath, S. H., O’Brien, E. H., & Hsing, C. (2011). Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: a meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 180-198.

Moloney, J.C. (1949). The magic cloak: A contribution to the psychology of authoritarianism. Wakefield, MA: Montrose Press.

Montagu, A. (1986). Touching: The human significance of the skin. New York: Harper & Row.

Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Ribble, Margaret (1943). The rights of infants. NY: Columbia University Press.

Spitz, R.A. (1945). Diacritic and coenesthetic organizations. The Psychoanalytic Review, XXXII (2), 154.

Sroufe, L.A., Egeland, B, Carlson, E.A., & Collins, W.A. (2005). The development of the person: The Minnesota study of risk and adaptation from birth to adulthood. New York: Guilford.

Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Weil, J.L. (1992). Early deprivation of empathic care. Madison: International Universities Press.

Winnicott, D.W. (1987). Babies and their mothers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Winnicott, D.W. (1990). Home is where we start from: Essays by a psychoanalyst (compiled and Ed. By C. Winnicott, R. Shepherd, M. Davis). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.