About
Babies
How Important Is
Physical Contact with Your Infant?
Touch and emotional
engagement boost early childhood development,
but can children recover from neglectful environments?
By Katherine Harmon
May 6, 2010
The stark institutional isolation prevalent in the orphanages of
some countries might have mostly melted away decades ago, but many
babies and young children all over the world still grow up in
environments where touch and emotional engagement are lacking. Many
children who have not had ample physical and emotional attention are
at higher risk for behavioral, emotional and social problems as they
grow up.
These trends point to the lasting effects of early infancy
environments and the changes that the brain undergoes during that
period. Below the surface, some children from deprived surroundings
such as orphanages, have vastly different hormone levels than their
parent-raised peers even beyond the baby years. For instance, in
Romania in the 1980s, by ages six to 12, levels of the stress
hormone cortisol were still much higher in children who had lived in
orphanages for more than eight months than in those who were adopted
at or before the age of four months, according to a
study from Development and Psychopathology. Other
work has shown that children who experienced early deprivation also
had different levels of oxytocin and vasopressin (hormones that have
been linked to emotion and social bonding), despite having had an
average of three years in a family home. "This environmental change
[into a home] does not seem to have completely overridden all of the
effects of early neglect," the researchers, led by Alison Wismer
Fries of the Department of Psychology at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison noted in
their study, published in 2005 in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
Myriad biological and environmental factors shape development and
can be difficult to tease apart in scientific studies of children,
who all have different genetic predispositions and experiences. But
many stories of delayed development and troublesome behavior, such
as in the seven-year-old Russian orphan who was returned by his
adoptive family in the U.S. in April 2010, have spurred researchers
to take an even closer look into the effects of early contact
deprivation.
On the flip side, researchers have been discovering how emphasizing
skin-to-skin contact between baby and parent can be a boon to both
and how consistent emotional engagement with infants can speed their
development and recognition of self.
What is so special about these basic behaviors that come without
thinking to most parents? We spoke with
Ann
Bigelow, a professor and researcher of developmental psychology
at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, whose
lab has been conducting research into parent behavior and infant
development.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
We have known for a
long time that skin-to-skin contact with babies is important for
their development. In what ways does it help them?
Particularly in the newborn period, it helps calm babies: they cry
less and it helps them sleep better. There are some studies that
show their brain development is facilitated—probably because they
are calmer and sleep better.
Does skin-to-skin
contact with their babies have benefits for the parents?
It seems to help the mothers, too. It reduces their stress
level—they report lower levels of depression, they seem to be able
to be more sensitive to their baby's cues and the babies are more
responsive to the mother through the whole first three months. They're recognizing their mother earlier, so the relationship
between the mother and baby is off to a facilitated start. It works
the same way with fathers, too.
There is some interesting work showing that mothers who have just
given birth, their skin area on their chest is a degree or two
higher than the rest of their body, creating a natural warming area
for the newborn. They have the ability to thermo-regulate for the
baby—if the baby's temperature drops, the mother's temperature
rises, and if the baby's temperature rises, the mother's drops.
There seems to be a connection between mother and baby from the
birthing process itself.
What is happening in
the body—of both parent and child—when there is skin-to-skin
contact?
From the mother's perspective, it probably releases oxytocin. On the
behavioral level, if you have a baby that is more relaxed and
sleeping better, that's going to relax the mother more.
The newborn is coming out of a very restrictive environment, so
anything that simulates that, comforts them. Being touched or hearing
a heartbeat is familiar because they heard it in the womb.
Aside from contact,
what are some of the other early interactions between adults and
infants that are important for development?
One of the things infants learn early in life is that their actions
affect others' responses—they sense that they're active agents in
their environment, so the world isn't just a sound and light show. They learn that probably most readily through other people because
people are responsive to babies. Babies catch on very quickly that
their actions get a predictable response—you know, "I smile, Mom
smiles back"—not all the time but most of the time. They develop a
sense that "I'm a causal agent."
There's research that shows babies like to be imitated. We interact
with babies much differently than we interact with peers. We tend to
imitate behavior back to them in an exaggerated way, which is
exactly what babies need, and it helps them learn about their own
emotional experience. Seeing it reflected back helps them understand
themselves at a very basic perceptual understanding.
And do infants with
mothers who are quick to imitate develop more rapidly?
Yes, and that seems to be independent of how talkative mothers are
or how smiley mothers are. I think there's probably an upper limit
to it. If you're just doing everything the baby does, that could be
irritating, just as it would be to anyone else. Most of this stuff
is done outside of the mother's awareness—this is just what they do
naturally when they are playing with their baby.
At what age do babies start to recognize that they are active
agents?
Babies can recognize that "you're imitating me," some say, within
the first few hours. Certainly by four months, babies will respond
differently if responses from mothers are a reflection of what
they're currently doing.
It may also depend how responsive the mother—or the partner that the
baby has experience with—is to the baby. If the mother was depressed
and therefore not emotionally engaging with the baby, those babies
are at risk because those babies are not learning about themselves.
Babies get used to the one person that's most familiar, so if you're
with a depressed mother who has low responsiveness, those babies
will be most responsive to those who are least responsive, so
they're perpetuating a risk factor for themselves. There's nothing
wrong with the baby; they're just responding to what they're
experiencing.
A lot of these
outcomes are measured by early developmental progress—do some of
these differences eventually even themselves out?
For many, yes. But of course it's easier if they start out on the
right track than if they have to be rectified.
The more experience babies have with someone who is going to be
emotionally engaged with them, the better off they're going to be.
But babies are incredibly flexible and adaptable. It's probably the
most adaptable point in our lives, which is a good thing because
things can turn around.
Is there an age where
skin-to-skin contact and other interactions lose some of their
importance for early development?
In certain countries, skin-to-skin contact is standard care for
babies, and the babies will determine when they have had enough
because they will start to have an interest in other things.
Much has been made of
children from orphanages, who might have missed out on a lot of the
personalized physical and emotional engagement during their infancy.
Does this really have long-term effects?
There's been some interesting work done with children who have been
adopted from Romania, where there wasn't a lot of individual
attention. In Romania, at least initially after the country opened
up [in 1989], there were few adults to many children, and they were
also separated by age, so the children weren't interacting with one
another as much. After they were adopted into Canadian homes, the
longer they had been in the orphanage, the more likely they were to
have longer-term deficits. But even if they had been in orphanages
for a long time, going into a family environment was beneficial. Most of the kids ended up being okay. Some took longer than others
to be okay, and some had long-term deficits.
What are some of the
long-term deficits that are common in some of these children?
There are some cognitive deficits initially, and there are some
emotional differences. Some have found that children from Romania
have indiscriminant friendliness—they're more likely to go off with
strangers. It's almost as if they think "all adults are wonderful,"
and they don't have the sense "there are particular adults that are
mine."
What can or should be
done for children who are coming from an environment where they
might not have gotten much physical touching or emotional
engagement?
The main thing would be to give them what they didn't get.
What else should we
know about the role of infant engagement in development?
It's not that anything is cut in stone. I don't want to give the
impression that if babies don't get this they're marked for life.
This early understanding of self and early understanding of
other is
developed through interaction. It teaches babies basic lessons that
they have some agency in the world, so that allows them to explore
the world and feel like they can affect their environment as opposed
to just being helpless to whatever happens to them. We're basically
a social species, and we learn those things through interacting with
others.
Read
full Scientific American Journal
here
'Behold, I will bring them from the north country, And gather them
from the ends of the earth,
Among them the blind and the lame,
The woman with child and The one who labors with child, together,
A
great throng shall return there...And My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the LORD.'
Jeremiah 31:8, 14
~~~
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