It is crazy to think that back in the early sixties they were doing tests to determine whether “love” is an important thing between parents and their children. These scientific experiments where paramount in fact, since prior to this it was believed by the scientific community, the psychological establishment, pediatricians of the day and even the federal government that the exact opposite was true. Yes, that’s right. They believed that showing love or displays of affection had a profoundly negative impact on children. They went so far as to say it was detrimental to their health. “Mother-love is a dangerous instrument” was a popular saying in the age of Detachment Parenting.

Harry Harlow carried out these widely publicized maternal-deprivation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys to debunk the common belief that maternal or parental affection was not healthy for children. He is most cited for two types of experiments he did with infant monkeys, the surrogate mother experiment in which he separated newborn monkeys from their biological mother and gave them access to two fabricated surrogates (one made of wood and mesh wire that had food and another made from terrycloth with a cue-ball for a head and no food source associated to it) and the isolation experiments where he did varying partial and total isolation experiments on newborn monkeys and mothers. The byproduct of these perceivably sadist experiments was a precursor to the Animal Liberation Movement.

Ira Glass from, “This American Life” explains the situation in practical terms - not only was psychology by-in-large in its infancy but medicine was still making major discoveries on things like how bacteria spread infections. Essentially, doctors in the early part of the century noticed that children in the hospital who were picked up a lot would have adverse affect on their condition (it didn’t dawn on them that it may have to do with the nurses and/or doctors may have been transmitting harmful bacteria to the child through bad practice) — so the mandate of the day was that sick children should not be touched - in fact it was dangerous for them. What is fascinating is the Psychologists of the time backed up this theory by saying, if you follow this you will raise healthier children.

So this is were Harry Harlow steps into the picture to say - I can prove that love is important to raising healthy children, that in fact love is an important key to their development. The surrogate Mother experiments showed that the monkey preferred to spend all of its time with the terrycloth surrogate unless it was hungry, then it would feed from the other and return to the terrycloth one straight-away.

In another experiment, Harry rigged the terrycloth one to reject the baby in a number of ways (either with spring-loaded action - to hurl the baby across the cage or with retractable blunt spikes on its chest) that showed the baby did everything in its power to reconcile with the surrogate even after being rejected over and over again. This proving that the need for maternal acceptance was quintessential. This quote from an essay in 1971 puts these initial efforts into perspective;

“In our study of psychopathology, we began as sadists trying to produce abnormality. Today we are psychiatrists trying to achieve normality and equanimity.” ~ American Scientist. vol. 59. no. 5. September-October; 1971

This seems particularly poignant when I turn the lens on my myself and my upbringing and reconsider my parents and their parenting style, in contrast to mine. There is an undeniable difference between the amount of affection I show to my children in comparison to what I got as a child - remembering, of course, that detachment parenting was the norm. Now that I know they were living in a time where, giving your child more than one kiss a year was considered “bad parenting” — I have a new-found perspective on my parents.

Where they stealing extra hugs and kisses contrary to the Day’s dictum even though by today’s standards they may have been perceived as reserved or dare I say, even stoic? Where they holding back their affections for the sake of raising good well-balanced children? And to both questions I say, “probably” and to that I would thank them, of course.

Sited Links;
YouTube | Harry Harlow & Rhesus Monkeys
This American Life | Unconditional Love
Wikipedia | Harry Harlow