Ok. I just finished watching the last installment of The Zeitgeist. I know, I know; conspiracy theory nuttery.
But, I heard something on there that made me blink.
They said that a baby who is denied human touch will die. That sounded a bit more crazy than everything else they were saying, so I decided to google that one.
It was kind of hard for me to google, but I did find this bit of questionable info repeated here on the Livestrong website. The claim seems to be that even if a child gets shelter and nutrition, the baby will die if it isn’t touched by a human.
Interesting to note that one of his doctoral students claimed that he believes “the animal liberation movement in the U.S. was born as a result of Harlow’s experiments”. :eek:
Sadly, yes. We think it can lead to a condition called Failure To Thrive (which can also be caused by other factors - basically it means that the infant/child isn’t gaining weight and height like it should, and the problem gets worse, not better, over time.)
It’s known that skin to skin contact and eye contact release hormones and enzymes during breastfeeding, and bottle feeding when it’s done right (meaning: don’t prop the bottle and walk away). It makes sense to me that a lack of the appropriate enzymes will make digestion less effective, and if digestion is less effective, so will nutrient absorption be less effective, and in turn, growth. I don’t know if that’s the actual proposed mechanism of action, but it must at least contribute. Here’s one studywhich demonstrates that lack of particular kinds of touch is seen from mothers with children with Failure To Thrive. Correlation does not equal causation, of course, but it’s an avenue worth exploring.
Now, most Failure To Thrive cases in the US are not fatal, because it’s something pediatricians look for very carefully and the babies get treated. There are *some *mortalities from it every year, although numbers are hard to find because such deaths are generally categorized as “malnutrition” in actuarial tables and epidemiology charts.
I know I’ve heard/read of babies in orphanages many years ago who died, or at least failed to thrive, due to touch deprivation. Here’s one site I managed to dig up; I don’t know how reputable or definitive it is.
I was also reminded of the experiments of Harry Harlow that Apollyon brought up.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I don’t find the links all that convincing, though. None of the links seem to state that removing the human touch alone will cause death. Failure to Thrive seems dependent on a lot of other factors, outside of not touching the infant.
And Failure to Thrive seems to be more of a…well, of a failure to thrive, as opposed to death.
Alot of those studies focus on situations where neglect in general is rampant, physical contact is probably near the bottom of the list of direct causes if it has any real effect at all.
The cases of feral children who’ve survived until their mid teens before discovery seems to thwart the idea that a baby MUST die if it hasn’t been touched. But it seems very likely that some COULD. But even if a child subjected to lack of human contact doesn’t die, it certainly becomes severely fucked-up as a result. Not recommended.
There’s no definitive study possible because of ethical concerns, as above. We’re relying on people to self-report, and what mother is going to admit that she never touches her child?
Besides the already mentioned Rhesus-monkey experiment, there’s also the “evidence” of the children found in Russian and Romanian orphanages after the fall of the Iron Curtain, who received feeding but no stimulation and had severe lack of human contact, due to the shortages of personnel.
Anecdotally, there’s also the famous experiment of Kaiser Friedrich II where, trying to find the original language of mankind, separated several children from their mothers; the nursing mothers were not allowed to speak with them or touch them, but instead of talking, the babies died soon.
With regards to feral children, who are almost always (known cases, separate from legends) emotionally and developmentally retarded, scholars are still unclear whether the children are retarded because they were abandoned, or if they were abandoned because they showed signs of retardation; obviously this is impossible to find out later, but it is clear that abandoning children is not good for them.
And yet paradoxically, he did that research partially because of the beliefs that you should minimize touching/holding your baby, and wanted to try to confirm some investigations at the time that showed the failure to thrive data. His research led to improvements in understanding abused children, in treating institutionalized children. He promoted nursing as a way to strengthen maternal bonding, and helped put to rest the “evidence” against touching and holding your children.
I’m not exactly a “fan” of his methods, but even doing real research on the topic at the time was nearly unheard of. Using brutal methods, he showed how inhumane we could be to humans.
Or possibly caused by being out of touch with the infant. If you’re not touching it, you’ll be less aware of its needs. Perhaps if it’s not being touched, it will also not be stimulated to demand feeding and other attention so much.