We continue interviewing the anthropologist María José Garrido, which will explain to us, on this occasion, the reasons why parents are now recommended practices and objects that cause physical and emotional separation of their children and, consequently, detachment, based on what We have already talked to her: that each culture shapes its individuals through upbringing.
Why is it that Western culture has turned its back on instincts such as breastfeeding or closeness to children and encourages detachment and false early autonomy with separations?
In my opinion there have been several factors. First, the separation of the mother from the baby is related to the medicalization of vital processes.
From the moment that women began to give birth in hospitals, in the mid-twentieth century, birth has become a disease.
Although it is necessary to recognize the benefits that it entailed, such as the decrease in the infant and maternal mortality rate, it also caused a control and a high degree of intervention in female sexual processes, such as pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, among others. The birth thus passed from an intimate and private social context, to becoming a public event.
But the labor world also imposes separation, right? If, on the other hand, the separation of mothers and children also arose from the need, during Industrialization, to obtain labor, which impelled women to join work in factories and caused the need to create places to house the children, until they were old to join work in the industry.
Are there more aspects than conditions this culture of detachment?
Nor should we forget that, while attachment does not require a considerable disbursement of money, but above all, presence.
On the other hand, the separation requires innumerable objects: artificial feeding based on formulas, independent room, cradle, high chair, park or yard, nurseries. There is a business around motherhood and childhood that enriches companies of all kinds: sanitary, furniture, etc. Finally, our culture has an obsession for control, for setting times and guidelines for everything. However, scientific knowledge, through the neurobiology of attachment, which studies the hormonal, neurological and chemical mechanisms related to the onset of the link, has shown that attachment is a healthy adaptive behavior, given the prolonged childhood of our species, fruit of its immaturity.
However, attachment breeding is normal in human beings, isn't it?
Attachment has guaranteed throughout the history of mankind the necessary physical and emotional care for adequate child development. To alter this process, selected for thousands of years by evolution, must necessarily have consequences, in terms of physical and psychic health.
But, at the same time, has another civilization or culture ever cared so much for the welfare of children as ours?
I think that no culture has cared so much for the well-being of children as ours, to the point of turning worry into a pathology.
We are concerned about child safety, food, children's diseases, development processes, etc. I mean that maybe we care too much about the maturation phases of children, so they should eat, sleep, play or learn, instead of accompanying them and respecting their evolutionary process. Protection should be marked by the baby or the child when they need it, and not by us, since we limit their ability to learn for themselves.
Has any culture ever considered it desirable for a baby to separate from his mother to socialize or learn how he repeats himself crushingly now?
It has only been done if they wanted to get tough and aggressive beings but not to socialize or learn. No culture has fostered or forced such a separation. Independence, autonomy and socialization have occurred, throughout the history of mankind, in a natural and gradual way, as part of the child's development process, since children are part of the group from birth, so they are used to their daily activities and rhythms, so it is not something taught in other cultures.
Isn't it true that the most violent peoples, like the Spartans, forced detachment and separation?
So is. Michael Odent has conducted an exhaustive investigation on separation after birth, preventing the intake of colostrum, through various rituals, on all continents. In Africa, the only people that do not alter colostrum consumption are the pygmies. And the Maori among oceanic cultures. Odent concluded that it was almost a cultural universal. There is no better way to get an individual to be aggressive than to prevent him from developing emotional ties from the beginning of his childhood. Extending the idea that colostrum is bad or impure, contact is prevented during the first days between mother and baby. Other formulas are also used to alter contact, such as circumcision, girdle the baby, baptize it, pierce the ears in the first moments, etc. Some cultures that have not prevented initial contact between mother and baby have been the Huiloches in northwestern Mexico, the Pygmies, the Quechuas or Aynara in Bolivia and the Maori in New Zealand.
To what extent does the child harm detachment?
Neurobiology has shown that without affection and links, some areas of the brain do not develop, such as the prefrontal cortex. Likewise, the alteration of the bond implies neuroendocrine modifications in the baby, since mother and baby constitute a neurophysiological unit. Both mutually regulate their physiological functions. Altering contact between the two has, therefore, consequences on the baby's metabolic, cardiac and nervous system.
Can we conclude that letting a baby cry or treating him with detachment makes him more violent or insensitive to the suffering of others, depending on what we can infer from comparative anthropology studies?
Yes, definitely. Prescott's intercultural anthropology studies in 49 tribes of the world corroborated it. As well as the Miami Touch Research Institute. From neonatology, Nils Bergman's studies showed that from the 14-16 week of gestation, the neural pathways of the fetus develop according to the context, the state of the mother and the environment. He also showed that the first year of life constitutes an external gestation, due to the immaturity of the human brain after birth. Letting a baby cry causes an increase in cortisol and adrenaline that, in large quantities, become neurotoxic that affect the neurological and neuromuscular system of the baby, which is in full formation. The need for a close relationship with the attachment figure in order to achieve an adequate development is established.
There is a tendency to recommend to parents the lonely sleep of babies, premature weaning, early separation, the use of objects that supplement physical contact and the insistence that carrying in arms or sleeping with the baby is bad for him when It is natural in humans.
Thanks to this interview with the anthropologist María José Garrido We are understanding much better the way in which our civilization treats children and what are the causes and consequences of detachment. We will continue talking with her.
