Extract - Bonding, Attachment & Separation ebook

Introduction

The human baby, when compared to the young of all other mammals, is incredibly vulnerable and is totally dependant on others meeting his needs. This vulnerability is in part an evolutionary trade-off. Human babies, and the babies of other primates, have a much larger brain in relation to body size than the young of all other mammals. Human adults also have a much smaller pelvis than our evolutionary ancestors as a result of us walking upright on two legs. The combination of these two factors means that the human baby has to be born at a much earlier stage of his developmental process in order to be able to pass safely through his mother’s pelvis. It is estimated that if human babies were born at the same developmental stage as other animals, we would need to have a gestational period of approximately 18 months, and give birth to a baby the size of a 9 month old.

As a consequence of this, human babies are unable to care directly for themselves and to meet their own primary needs. Because they require the longest period of care, protection and nurturing of any other species, there needs to be a way in which their parents feel motivated enough to expend the time, energy and effort required to look after them. How then, does the vulnerable newborn baby ensure his survival? The way this is done is through highly specific behaviours that enable both the baby and his parents to fall in love with each other and develop a bond that endures for life.

The bonding and attachment process is not only of critical importance in helping a baby develop a strong loving relationship with his caregivers, which becomes the model for all our future relationships, it also profoundly affects the structural and functional development of our brain. This process of falling in love has a number of significant effects on our psychological, emotional, social, behavioural and educational development.

Most people will be much more familiar with the term bonding than they are with attachment. Both of these terms have been used extensively and often interchangeably for several decades to describe the way in which the intimate relationship between a baby and his parents develops. Whilst these terms are in common usage, there seems to be no overall consensus on their definition. I am defining bonding and attachment as follows. Bonding refers to the specific relational interactions that occur between mother and baby throughout the prenatal period to the time immediately following birth. Attachment is the relational process that develops from after the bonding period through the early years of childhood, and beyond.

The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the bonding and attachment process rather than a detailed exploration of the subject, or a how-to-do-it textbook. Some of these books can be found in the references. My intention is to help both parents and professionals to understand the importance of this process. If parents are involved in some form of therapy with their children, I hope that it will help them to understand the treatment process more fully, and to work more strongly as a team with the practitioner.

At the same time, this book is also aimed at practitioners working with babies and children. I hope that some of this information may be of clinical use to them, and may be integrated into the practitioner’s own particular area of expertise and possibly stimulate the practitioner to explore the subject in more detail.

My use of the male pronoun in this book to describe both the prenate and baby is not meant to reflect some form of unconscious gender bias but to give a sense of consistency throughout the text, whilst at the same time making it easier to read.

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