As all parents know, babies don’t come with an “off” button. Nor do they have the ability to self-soothe until they are at least eighteen months old. When a baby cries, he doesn’t know he is wet, tired, hungry or bored—he only knows something is wrong, and he relies on an adult carer to soothe his feelings. Other than when feeling totally exhausted, an emotionally and physically healthy mother will be drawn to her infant. She will feel a physical longing to smell, cuddle, rock, coo and gaze at her infant.
In turn, the infant will respond with snuggling, cooing, smiling and sucking. This will bring pleasure and satisfaction to both mother and child and it is this reciprocal positive feedback loop that is the “dance” of attachment.
With the advent of neuroimaging, and the ability to look inside the brain, we are beginning to learn more and more about why this relationship is so necessary and what really happens when the minds of the mother and her baby meet.
A baby is born with a brain containing more than 100 billion neurons, many of them undifferentiated, or “just hanging around, not really knowing where to go”. The way these neural pathways organise themselves are critically dependant on sets of environmental cues, and these cues will mostly come from the relationship with the mother / primary caregiver. It is the “dance of attachment” that organises the infant brain into one that regards the world at two ends of the spectrum: as a benign place in which it is relatively safe, or one in which it is unsafe and knows its needs will not be met—and all of the variations along the way.
Experience can change the mature brain but experience during the critical period of infancy organises brain systems. What this really means is that “good enough” mothering will allow a baby to reach its full potential in adulthood, but poor mothering and trauma during infancy will permanently organise all future capabilities of the child and its possibilities of becoming a fully functioning adult.
To answer the three questions posed at the beginning…
• You can help your baby to be healthy and happy by having a close enough relationship with it. You do not have to be with it every second of every day but make sure that it is always in the care of people who understand its needs.
• No, it doesn’t matter if you go out to work, so long as the above is understood and taken care of. Part-time work until the baby is two is optimal but not essential.
• Where a baby spends more than a few hours a day in a child care environment, there should be protocols within the nursery that ensure the attachment needs of the baby are met. These could include focus on the ‘key worker’ relationship, so that one adult carer does all the ‘intimate’ activities with the baby such as nappy change and feeding, and the same adult should be responsible for the ‘handover’ morning and evening to the parent. There are plenty of opportunities to maximise the sensitivity of the childcare environment to support the attachment needs of the baby.
