Does Science Need to Tell Us Why Affection Matters?

“You’ve got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.”

I am a mother and fervently believe in the power of affection. I’ve never needed anyone, including my own mother, to tell me how vitally important parental affection is. I simply know it.

How humanity can suffer from a malnourishment of affection despite it being free and abundant boggles my mind. Millions of children worldwide grow up being starved of affection at no fault of their own.

Until now, I have avoided writing about child neglect and abuse because it makes me feel so sad. But I feel compelled to write this post after reading an article about a man who clearly misused his authority to crusade against parental affection.

There once lived an influential psychologist who didn’t believe in the power of affection. His name was John Watson and he founded behaviourism in the 1920's.

He not only didn’t believe in affection, but in his book Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928) he explained why parents should refrain from hugging, kissing, and cuddling their young children in order to encourage independence. He wrote,

“Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning.”

Not only did Watson fill his book with harmful child-rearing theories, he used them to raise his own children. His book sold over 100,000 copies within months of its release and his theories were embraced by many parents and professionals.

All of his children attempted suicide, and one of his sons succeeded in doing so in 1954. He himself died lonely and alone in 1958 after he burned all of his unpublished work.

John Watson’s advocacy bothers me a lot. Why had so many mothers allowed this psychopathic man to tell them that affection didn’t matter in raising healthy and happy children?

For thousands of years mothers have intuitively known the power of affection and used it to fulfill their babies’s most fundamental needs. Without it, babies will neither thrive nor develop normally.

There is no such thing as too much affection. But too little of it has a disastrous effect.

Recently, the article below by Melissa Fay Greene made its way into my inbox.

I learned about the tragedy of Romania’s neglected orphans years ago and it utterly broke my heart. Even though I knew it would be painful to read, I decided to take a look at it and learn from it what I could.

“Can a person unloved in childhood learn to love?” was the central question Melissa explored in her story of one of the neglected orphans. She chronicled the life of Izidor Ruckel, who had been abandoned at a few weeks old. He endured a harsh life in the Hospital for Irrevocable Children in Romania until being adopted by a kind American family when he was 11 years-old.

Conditions in the hospital were awful and there seemed to be little chance for Izidor to come out alive. “Odds were high,” Melissa wrote, “that he wouldn’t survive that long, that the boy with the shriveled leg would die in childhood, malnourished, shivering, unloved.”

Izidor was part of a smaller and luckier group of children whose intellectual development fared better despite a lack of nurturing in their early childhood. But he struggled with life-long issues of giving and receiving love from others, including his adopted family. His experience in the hospital severely affected his ability to feel affection along with other traumas inflicted on him.

The data Melissa refers to in her article assert that once past the sensitive period of 24 months, it becomes very difficult for a neglected child’s brain to process and respond to love and affection later on.

Even so, we must never lose hope nor give up on helping these children to heal. One particular scene from Izidor’s life warmed my heart. Despite being estranged from his adopted family, Izidor rushed to see his mother and sisters with flowers and tears in his eyes after he learned they had been involved in an accident.

Melissa writes, “Before leaving that day, Izidor would lay the flowers in his mother’s arms and say, with a greater attempt at earnestness than they’d ever heard before, ‘These are for all of you. I love you.’”

In the 1950’s, primate researcher Harry Harlow challenged John Watson’s cold and mechanistic theories on child-rearing. He set up a series of experiments on Rhesus monkeys that provided empirical evidence for the irreplaceable role affection plays in the healthy development of infants.

I had learned about Dr. Harlow’s experiments a long time ago, and was deeply affected by them. Maria Popova’s article below only deepened my understanding of them.

The most important lessons I got from these experiments were:

Love is the most fundamental of all human needs.

“Harlow found that the baby monkeys consistently chose the cuddly mother over the feeding but cold mother…. Over and over, the monkeys demonstrated that the safe embrace of comfort is more vital to their development than the steady but cold supply of sustenance.”

Inadequate affection negatively affects intelligence.

In the absence of a cuddly mother, infant monkeys were too distressed to explore and learn about their environments. Later on, psychologist John Bowlby’s research provided additional support for the link between intelligence and love. Maria writes,

“Love and intelligence, it turned out, were far more strongly correlated than genetics and intelligence.”

Love matters more than anything else.

Subsequent studies by Harlow’s students showed that monkeys raised by affectionate and nurturing caregivers who were not their biological mothers fared better than those raised by uncaring biological mothers.

“‘If monkeys have taught us anything,’ Harlow asserted in reflecting on his experiments, ‘it’s that you’ve got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.’” -Maria Popova

In the big picture, giving and receiving affection doesn’t just make us happier and smarter, it ensures the survival and health of our species.

In her article, Maria quotes Deborah Blum, author of the Pulitzer-winning book Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection:

“‘There is no requirement for angelic perfection in parenting. The requirement is just to stay in there. Harry’s research tells us that love is work. So do all the studies that follow. The nature of love is about paying attention to the people who matter, about still giving when you are too tired to give. Be a mother who listens, a father who cuddles, a friend who calls back, a helping neighbor, a loving child.’”

Deep down we all know that love and affection matter. We don’t need science to tell us why they matter, it just deepens our understanding of them. May we never underestimate the power of affection. It is what we all need to thrive and evolve.