In the aftermath of WWII, orphans, numbering in the hundreds if not thousands, roamed the streets of London displaced in large part as a result of almost nightly areal bombing attacks. The orphan issue caught the attention of The World Health Organization (WHO), however, they had no way of getting a handle on the situation. They invited John Bowlby to conduct an investigation designed to shed light on the orphan issue. Bowlby spent months meeting with and interviewing researchers working in the area of children separated from family and close friends for extended periods of time. A meeting with the American researcher René Spitz proved most fruitful.
Spitz, who hailed from Vienna, Austria, and was schooled in medicine and psychoanalysis, was involved with studying children who were experiencing long hospital stays. In this historical timeframe, the mid- to late 1940s, parents were not allowed to visit or stay with their children in the hospital for hygiene reasons. Children enduring long hospital stays often suffered from what was called “hospitalism.” Hospitalism produced children who were often listless and lethargic. Spitz’s studies impressed Bowlby and he thought for sure they had a bearing on the orphan issue back in Britain.
Bowlby wrote up the results of his investigation and they were published by the WHO in 1951 under the title Maternal Care and Mental Health. Outside of hospitals changing their no visitation policies, not much else came of Bowlby’s report. In essence, Bowlby was told that politicians and policymakers needed more. And more they got.
In 1969, Bowlby published his book entitled Attachment and Loss, in which he laid out his theory of attachment. According to his son, Sir Richard Bowlby, speaking at a conference held in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada,[1] John Bowlby assumed that his book Attachment and Loss would be enough to motivate politicians and policymakers to take action. Sir Richard told us that his father never dreamed that he would have to write three volumes on attachment, but he did.
After the release of his first book Bowlby was essentially told that politicians and policymakers needed to see data in support of his theory. Bowlby’s second volume, Attachment and Loss: Separation—Anxiety and Anger, was released in 1973 and contained copious data drawn from fields such as ethology (Harry Harlow’s work figured prominently here) and developmental psychology, which just happened to be Mary Ainsworth’s area of expertise. Ainsworth was Bowlby’s longtime collaborator.
Nope. No go. Politicians and policymakers were still not moved. In his third volume, Attachment and Loss: Loss—Sadness an Depression (released in 1980), Bowlby made an effort to talk directly to politicians and policymakers. Again, they remained unmoved. The scientific data in support of Bowlby’s theory was there and it was piling up. What might be going on here? Susie Orbach, an influential British psychoanalyst writing on feminist issues back in this timeframe,[2] might have the answer.
Writing in her 1999 article entitled Why Is Attachment in the Air?, Orbach tells us that “Feminist analysts first had a difficult time with what they perceived as Bowlby’s [scientific] valourisation of the maternal at a moment when we were trying to [sociologically] understand the relationship of women’s oppression to the structure of the nuclear family.” Orbach continues, “Bowlby’s [scientific] observation of the child’s need of the mother was just the kind of presumption that needed [postmodern] deconstructing.” In essence, feminists took an anti-science stance towards Bowlby’s work. Again, according to Sir Richard, John Bowlby thought that framing “mothering” and “maternal care” using science would be a good thing, one that would be embraced by not only women but also by politicians and policymakers. Feminists looked at it differently. Yes, they recognized that the framing of mothering by science revealed that mothering was a very complex and involved process that took decades to complete. However, at the same time they saw mothering as an under-appreciated, underpaid (as in no pay), and imprisoning endeavor. “Forget science,” they probably shouted, and that was probably not the F-word they used. For reference, allow me to tell you this story that was told to us by Sir Richard.
Sir Richard told us that he sits on the board of a chidminders organization. In Britain, daycare workers are called childminders. A typical childminders center is run by a social worker or nurse psychologist trained in child development. A consulting psychologist or psychiatrist often visits the center to check on how things are going. Childminders are heavily trained and supervised. Each childminder is in charge of no more than three children. And parents are expected to have regular visits with the staff so that child development progress can be discussed. It’s policy that the childminders are to act as secondary attachment figures only and that parents will act as primary attachment figures. Use of the center is limited to no more than 20 hours per week. Childminders are paid accordingly, usually around $80,000 (U.S.) or more depending on their experience. Sir Richard told us that childminder centers in Britain are very costly and such a model may not take hold in the U.S. because of that cost. Again, mothering takes skill and mothers should be remunerated accordingly. Sadly, there is no money in mothering. As Louis Cozolino puts it in his book The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, “My hope is that, as the evidence of the importance of early experience mounts, it will begin to have an effect on public policy and the allocation of resources.” We’re still waiting. Can you blame feminists for saying We’ve had enough; we’re moving on. Let someone else be caregivers for a change.
Since Bowlby’s time (he died in 1990), more attachment-oriented research has continued to pile up. Neuropsychologist Allan Shore released his groundbreaking book
In my next and final post in this series I would like to just briefly mention common brain disorders that result when the brain system is subjected to challenging conditions. I’ll end by coming back to McGilchrist’s work in the area of cultural cognitive models.
Postscript: I feel compelled to tell you about the child evacuations that took place in Britain during WWII. This was a practice that greatly concerned John Bowlby. The British government decided to evacuate children to the countryside in an attempt to save them from areal bombings. Children were loaded into train cars and sent to family homes, non-family homes, and homes run by religious groups. Bowlby objected to these forced separations arguing that they may do more harm than good. Only in recent years has the British government admitted that, sadly, many of these evacuated children were ultimately abused by people on the receiving end who should have provided safe and secure environments. British evacuation policies during WWII bring up memories of Native American children who were pulled from their homes and put into Indian boarding schools. Quoting Wikipedia we hear that Indian boarding schools “were established in the United States from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries with a primary objective of ‘civilizing’ or assimilating Native American children and youth into Anglo-American culture.” Canada also had these types of boarding schools for indigenous children. Like with Britain, Canada recently acknowledged this dark period of their history in an attempt to bring healing. The U.S. has been conspicuously silent.
NOTES:
[1] Contact the Foundation and I’ll find the date for you. It was held by the Rocky Mountain Play Therapy Institute, which is located in Calgary.
[2] For an example, see her 1983 book
