In the 19th century, due to urbanization, industrialization, and other factors in France, many guardians entrusted infants to foster families in rural areas. In addition to causing many public health incidents (pasteurized milk was not yet popular at the time), which increased infant mortality, this also led to long-term separation of infants from their families.
Subsequently, some psychologists considered whether foster families might provide nutritious food for physical growth, but whether emotional growth was being neglected. In the 1930s, David Levy introduced the concept of emotional hunger. This was because many children who grew up in foster families at the time possessed the characteristic of being outwardly amiable but inwardly seemingly indifferent.
At that time, there was also a practice that was believed to “exercise the infant’s will”: when an infant cried, they were left to calm down on their own. In 1922, John B. Watson, during his tenure as president of the American Psychological Association, theorized the above content into the Cry It Out (CIO) method (Cry It Out).
Watson believed that giving infants too much love was dangerous. The reason was that such “spoiling” would lead to infants becoming whiny, dependent on others, and failures. Watson also founded Behaviorism psychology, which can be used to explain infant crying. The general idea is that children cry to “gain reinforcement”, and comforting them will “reinforce” the crying behavior, while ignoring them will cause it to “extinguish”.
Now it seems that CIO creates a state similar to learned helplessness. Infants give up seeking help because their expression is ineffective, which is a psychological trauma. However, this was not Watson’s worst academic work. He also conducted the Little Albert experiment. This experiment made 9-month-old Albert develop a fear of various things through classical conditioning. Little Albert may have eventually died at the age of 6. It is unknown whether the experiment had serious consequences for him.
(In addition, Watson’s two sons later suffered from severe depression, one of whom committed suicide)
In 1951, the WHO commissioned John Bowlby, a researcher who opposed CIO, to publish Maternal Care and Mental Health. The book proposed that close relationships with infants are very important, and failure to do so may lead to irreversible and significant impacts on mental health.
However, Bowlby had no evidence, so the theory was still controversial until Harlow presented his rhesus monkeys. Harlow’s experiment involved designing two mother devices, one was a wire mother made of metal wire and wood, and the other was a cloth mother wrapped in cloth. When only the wire mother held the bottle, the monkey would go back to the wire mother to get food, but would eventually return to the cloth mother’s embrace.
Harlow later conducted experiments with only wire mothers and cloth mothers. It was found that the monkeys raised by the wire mothers often had diarrhea, indicating that they were under greater stress. This proves that mothers provide more than just food for infants, “contact comfort” is also important. However, Harlow also conducted very bad experiments, making him a monkey abuser.
In 1971, Harlow suffered from depression after his wife’s death. He abandoned his research on maternal love and turned to studying loneliness and depression. The experimental process involved isolating the monkeys and locking them in one-way mirror cages. As a result, two died of starvation due to refusing to eat. The surviving monkeys were also not right, lost their social skills, and were unable to mate.
So Harlow selected the female monkeys and designed a device, which is also mentioned in the paper as the rape rack. Harlow fixed the female monkeys and then allowed normal male monkeys to mate. As a result, baby monkeys were indeed bred, but the isolated female monkeys were unable to raise their offspring, either abusing them or ignoring them. Some female monkeys even bit off their children’s fingers, while another crushed their children’s heads.
However, Harlow’s experiments were small in number and involved animals, so they may not be convincing enough. Fortunately (and unfortunately), a large amount of human data appeared after December 1989. This is the Romanian orphans phenomenon. At that time, Romania required mandatory childbearing, but families who could not afford to raise children could only send them to orphanages.
In the years before Romanian General Secretary Ceaușescu was overthrown, the Romanian economy deteriorated, so the conditions in orphanages also worsened. Food was scarce, and there was a lack of staff, which led to children starving to death, serious psychological problems, etc. It was not until after the Romanian Revolution that the outside world learned about such things, so many Europeans went to adopt these orphans, which led to the discovery of the children’s serious psychological problems.
Research has found that these children had higher rates of autism spectrum disorder symptoms, limited social participation, and ADHD than the control group. Even with the care of adoptive families, the situation can be alleviated in adulthood, but there are still situations such as a lack of happiness. There is also the problem that the mortality rate in orphanages every winter was 40%. Some people estimate that the children who survived had relatively high adaptability and resilience.
Another study found that the brains of these Romanian orphans were about 8.6% smaller than the brains of other adopted children. And for every additional month of deprivation, brain volume decreased by 0.27%. Deprivation-related changes in brain volume are associated with decreased IQ and increased symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
So “love” is not just an abstract emotion, it is crucial to the structure of the brain and brings real weight. Therefore, 〈No Love, No Custody〉, depriving guardians with child abuse behavior of their custody, may not be a bad idea.