The Argument Against Spoiling-Fact Sheet

Compiled by Jessica Hudson: Owner Eva Lillian Maternity  May 5, 2004

Spoiling occurs when something is left alone to rot, not when it is lovingly attended to...

“Attachment parenting implies first opening your mind and heart to the individual needs of your baby, and eventually you will develop the wisdom on how to make on-the-spot decisions on what works best for both you and your baby…”

“AP is an approach, rather than a strict set of rules. It's actually the style that many parents use instinctively. Parenting is too individual and baby too complex for there to be only one way. The important point is to get connected to your baby…”

“By becoming sensitive to the cues of your infant, you learn to read your baby's level of need. Because baby trusts that his needs will be met and his language listened to, the infant trusts in his ability to give cues. As a result, baby becomes a better cue-giver, parents become better cue-readers, and the whole parent-child communication network becomes easier.”

“The better you know your child, the more your child trusts you, and the more effective your discipline will be.”

Maternal behaviors, especially breastfeeding, result in an outpouring of the hormones prolactin and oxytocin. These "mothering hormones" act as biological helpers, giving moms motherly feelings. They may, in fact, be the biological basis of the concept of mother's intuition. Prolactin levels increase ten-to twenty-fold within thirty minutes after mother begins breastfeeding. Most of it is gone again within an hour. Prolactin is a short-acting substance, so to get the best response a mother must breastfeed frequently – which is what babies want anyway. Hormones are biological helpers that improve the behavior of the baby and the caregiving of the mother. Your choice in parenting style can make them work for you.”

The most plausible explanation for SIDS, in most babies, is a defect in cardiorespiratory control and arousability during sleep. Also, research suggests that some infants at risk for SIDS have less-organized physiological control mechanisms. So, any parenting style that can enhance the development of a baby's physiological control systems and increase mother's awareness to subtle changes in her baby's physiology, would lower the risk of SIDS. Attachment parenting does this.

Attachment parenting organizes an infant's physiological control systems. New thinking is that some SIDS babies may not have been as physiologically normal as they appeared to be before they died. Findings of higher heartrates and less adaptable heartrate variability in babies at risk for SIDS suggests these infants are less able to adjust their physiology to changing biological conditions. Also, several studies of high risk infants and babies who died of SIDS suggests that some of these babies had temperaments and behavioral qualities that lessened their ability to protest life-threatening circumstances. Summing up this complicated and shaky research that attempts to correlate infant temperament and SIDS, it seems that in some infants the drive to survive is weak. Some infants are physiologically disadvantaged to protect themselves from SIDS.

A baby who spends a lot of time in mother's arms, at mother's breasts, and in mother's bed becomes more physiologically organized. Therefore, I believe a baby whose overall physiology is more organized has a lower risk of succumbing to SIDS.”

“Experiments on both human infants and infant experimental animals showed these fascinating results about attachment research. :

• Human infants with the most secure attachment to their mothers had the best cortisol balance.
• The longer infant animals were separated from their mothers, the higher the cortisol levels, suggesting that these babies could be chronically stressed. The mothers also experienced elevated cortisol levels when separated from their babies.
• Prolonged cortisol elevations may diminish growth.
• Prolonged cortisol elevations may suppress the immune system.
• Infant animals separated from their mothers showed imbalances in the autonomic nervous system -- the master control system of the physiology. They didn't show the usual increases and decreases in heart rate and body temperature, had abnormal heartbeats (called "arrhythmia"), and showed disturbances in sleep patterns, such as a decrease in REM sleep (the stage of sleep in which an infant is most arousable in response to a life-threatening event). Similar physiological changes were measured in preschool children separated from their parents
• In addition to the agitation caused by prolonged elevation of adrenal hormones, separation sometimes caused the opposite physiological effect: withdrawn, depressed infants who had low cortisol levels.
• Separated infants showed more irregular heart rates.
• Infants separated from their mothers were less able to maintain a stable body temperature.
• Infant animals who stayed close to their mothers had higher levels of growth hormones and enzymes essential for brain and heart growth. Separation from their mothers, or lack of interaction with their mothers when they were close by, caused the levels of these growth-promoting substances to fall.

Clearly, the continued presence of a nurturing mother is important for the infant's physiological and emotional well-being. A secure mother-infant attachment helps an infant's physiological systems work better. “

 “Attachment parenting helps babies thrive. If, as we have seen, an in-arms baby cries less and is less anxious, and therefore consumes less energy, I conclude that the infant has more "free time" to divert that energy that would have been wasted worrying and fussing into thriving. To thrive means more than just growing bigger; it means an infant grows to her fullest potential, physically, intellectually, and physiologically.

Attachment-parented babies feed more frequently, an interaction that itself improves growth and overall behavioral organization. One of the oldest recipes for the failing to thrive baby is "take your baby to bed and nurse." As previously discussed, attachment promotes growth hormones and enzymes that enhance brain growth in experimental animals. Growth hormone is secreted primarily during sleep. Endocrinologists have discovered that human infants deprived of sufficient attachment have lower growth hormones and fail to thrive -- a malady called psychosocial deprivation.”

Babies who are "trained" not to express their needs may appear to be docile, compliant, or "good" babies. Yet these babies could be depressed babies who are shutting down the expression of their needs, and they may become children who don't ever speak up to get their needs met and eventually become the highest-need adults. “

By the end of the year, you have the prettiest, happiest little flower shop and countless people remark on it being the finest they have ever seen. They make comments like, if I knew that I could start a business which turned out so well, I would open one myself!

Your friends, your occasionally unsupportive friends, are now laudatory and filled with compliments for your flower shop and the way you have done it.

All of this . . . for a flower shop. If you put the same time, effort and love into raising your baby, people get upset that you seem to be tired too much and hardly ever join them for lunch. Oh, well.”

Hormones, The Language of Love

In his beautiful book, The Scientification of Love, French obstetrician Michel Odent explains how Oxytocin, a hormone released by the pituitary gland stimulates the release of chemical messengers in the heart. Oxytocin, which is essential during birth, stimulating contractions, and during lactation, stimulating the 'milk ejection reflex', is also involved in other 'loving behaviors'. ‘It is noticeable that whatever the facet of love we consider, oxytocin is involved.' Says Odent. ‘During intercourse both partners - female and male - release oxytocin.’ One study even shows that the simple act of sharing a meal with other people increases our levels of this 'love hormone'.2

The altruistic oxytocin is part of a complex hormonal balance. A sudden release of Oxytocin creates an urge toward loving which can be directed in different ways depending on the presence of other hormones, which is why there are different types of love. For example, with a high level of prolactin, a well-known mothering hormone, the urge to love is directed toward babies.

While Oxytocin is an altruistic hormone and prolactin a mothering hormone, endorphins represent our 'reward system'. ‘Each time we mammals do something that benefits the survival of the species, we are rewarded by the secretion of these morphine-like substances.’ Says Odent.

During birth there is also an increase in the level of endorphins in the fetus so that in the moments following birth both mother and baby are under the effects of opiates. The role of these hormones is to encourage dependency, which ensures a strong attachment between mother and infant. In situations of failed affectional bonding between mother and baby there will be a deficiency of the appropriate hormones, which could leave a child susceptible to substance abuse in later life as the system continually attempts to right itself.3 You can say no to drugs, but not to neurobiology. Human brains have evolved from earlier mammals. The first portion of our brain that evolved on top of its reptilian heritage is the limbic system, the seat of emotion. It is this portion of the brain that permits mothers and their babies to bond. Mothers and babies are hardwired for the experience of togetherness. The habits of breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and babywearing practiced by the majority of mothers in non-industrialized cultures, and more and more in our own, facilitate two of the main components needed for optimal mother/child bonding: proximity and touch.

In many ways it's obvious why a helpless newborn would require continuous close proximity to a caregiver; they're helpless and unable to provide for themselves. But science is unveiling other less obvious benefits of holding baby close. Mother/child bonding isn't just for brains, but is also an affair of the heart. In his 1992 work, Evolution's End, Joseph Chilton Pearce describes the dual role of the heart cell, saying that it not only contracts and expands rhythmically to pump blood, it communicates with its fellow cells. ‘If you isolate a cell from the heart, keep it alive and examine it through a microscope, you will see it lose it's synchronous rhythm and begin to fibrillate until it dies. If you put another isolated heart cell on that microscopic slide it will also fibrillate . If you move the two cells within a certain proximity, however , they synchronize and beat in unison.’ Perhaps this is why most mothers instinctively place their babies to their left breast, keeping those hearts in proximity. The heart produces the hormone, ANF that dramatically affects every major system of the body. ‘All evidence indicates that the mother's developed heart stimulates the newborn heart, thereby activating a dialogue between the infant's brain-mind and heart.’ says Pearce who believes this heart to heart communication activates intelligences in the mother also. ‘On holding her infant in the left-breast position with its corresponding heart contact, a major block of dormant intelligences is activated in the mother, causing precise shifts of brain function and permanent behavior changes.’ In this beautiful dynamic the infant's system is activated by being held closely; and this proximity also stimulates a new intelligence in the mother, which helps her to respond to and nurture her infant.

‘The easiest and quickest way to induce depression and alienation in an infant or child is not to touch it, hold it, or carry it on your body.’ - James W. Prescott, PhD

Research in neuroscience has shown that touch is necessary for human development and that a lack of touch damages not only individuals, but our whole society. Human touch and love is essential to health. A lack of stimulus and touch very early on causes the stress hormone, cortisol to be released which creates a toxic brain environment and can damage certain brain structures. According to James W. Prescott, PhD, of the Institute of Humanistic Science, and former research scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, sensory deprivation results in behavioral abnormalities such as depression, impulse dyscontrol, violence, substance abuse, and in impaired immunological functioning in mother deprived infants. For over a million years babies have enjoyed almost constant in-arms contact with their mothers or other caregivers, usually members of an extended family, receiving constant touch for the first year or so of life. ‘In nature's nativity scene, mother's arms have always been baby's bed, breakfast, transportation, even entertainment, and, for most of the world's babies, they still are.’ says developmental psychologist, Sharon Heller in, The Vital Touch: How Intimate Contact With Your Baby Leads to Happier, Healthier Development.

To babies,touch = love and fully loved babies develop healthy brains. During the critical period of development following birth the infant brain is undergoing a massive growth of neural connections. Synaptic connections in the cortex continue to proliferate for about two years, when they peak. During this period one of the most crucial things to survival and healthy development is touch. All mammal mothers seem to know this instinctively, and, if allowed to bond successfully with their babies they will provide continuous loving touch.

Touch deprivation in infant monkeys is so traumatic their whole system goes haywire, with an increase of stress hormones, increased heart rate, compromised immune system and sleep disturbances.

With only 25% of our adult brain size, we are the least mature at birth of any mammal. Anthropologist, Ashley Montagu concluded that given our upright position and large brains, human infants are born prematurely while our heads can still fit through the birth canal, and that brain development must therefore extend into postnatal life. He believed the human gestation period to actually be eighteen months long - nine in the womb and another nine outside it, and that touch is absolutely vital to this time of ‘exterogestation.’

Newborns are born expecting to be held, handled, cuddled, rubbed, kissed, and maybe even licked! All mammals lick their newborns vigorously, off and on, during the first hours and days after birth in order to activate their sensory nerve endings, which are involved in motor movements, spatial, and visual orientation. These nerve endings cannot be activated until after birth due to the insulation of the watery womb environment and the coating of vernix casseus on the baby's skin.

Recall Dr. Janov's claim that you can kiss a brain into maturity. Janov believes that very early touch is central to developing a healthy brain. ‘Irrespective of the neurojuices involved, it is clear that lack of love changes the chemicals in the brain and can eventually change the structure of that brain.’

Human physiology, they say, does not direct all of its own functions; it is interdependent. It must be steadied by the physical presence of another to maintain both physical and emotional health. ‘Limbic regulation mandates interdependence for social mammals of all ages.’ says Lewis, ‘But young mammals are in special need of it's guidance: their neural systems are not only immature but also growing and changing. One of the physiologic processes that limbic regulation directs, in other words, is the development of the brain itself - and that means attachment determines the ultimate nature of a child's mind.’ A baby's physiology is maximally open-loop: without limbic regulation, vital rhythms collapse posing great danger, even death.

Children require ongoing neural synchrony from parents in order for their natural capacity for self-directedness to emerge. A mother's love is a continuous shaping force throughout childhood and requires an adequate stage of dependency. The work of Mary Ainsworth has shown that maternal responsiveness and close bodily contact lead to the unfolding of self-reliance and self confidence.9 Because our culture does not sufficiently value interpersonal relationships, the mother/child bond is not recognized and supported as it could be.

The ability of a mother to read the emotional state of her child is older than our own species, and is essential to our survival, health and happiness. We are reminded of this each time a hurt child changes from sad/scared/angry to peaceful in our loving embrace. Warm human contact generates the internal release of opiates, making mother's love a powerful anodyne. Even teenagers who sometimes behave as if they are 'so over' the need for a mother's affection must be kept in the limbic loop. Children at this age might be at special risk for falling through the emotional cracks. If they don't get the emotional regulation that family relationships are designed to provide, their hungry brains may seek ineffectual substitutes like drugs and alcohol.”

Furthermore, in most countries other than the US, colic – prolonged periods of inconsolable crying that usually happens in the evening - is unknown, according to pediatrician Ronald Barr, M.D., of Children’s Hospital in Montreal, who conducted numerous studies on infant crying between 1988 and 1997. In fact, in most other parts of the world, babies rarely cry for long periods of time, perhaps because their needs are met immediately by their mothers, who are in constant contact with them.

Small cites these and many other examples of how different cultures parent, based on studies conducted during the past 30 years. As she points out, our closely held beliefs about raising children are vastly different from those of most of the world. In many other cultures around world, including other industrialized societies, babies are held in slings or front packs all day long, and are rarely observed to cry."

The other main precept of attachment parenting is responsiveness and respect for children's needs. Although giving yourself over entirely to your child's needs may sound overwhelming, attachment parenting advocates maintain that this style of parenting is actually easier. Based on her experience with hundreds of families, nationally known family and parenting counselor Naomi Aldort, of Eastsound, Washington, says, ‘I can't believe how difficult most mothers make it for themselves: sleeping in a different room and having to get up and go to the baby in the night, all the preparation and warming involved in bottle feeding, all the gadgets and equipment to pack whenever they go out. All attachment mothers need is a sling and their own body.’”

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