Touch

Babies Need to be Touched and Nurtured

In the thirteenth century, King Frederick II conducted an experiment with fifty infants to determine what language they would speak if never permitted to hear the spoken word. So he assigned foster mothers to bathe and suckle the children but forbade them to fondle pet, or talk to their charges. The experiment failed because all fifty infants died. We learned hundreds of years later that babies who aren’t touched and cuddled often fail to thrive.

The world has recently been exposed to yet another example of neglected and abused children. Mary Carlson, a researcher from Harvard Medical School, observed an overcrowded Romanian orphanage, where row upon row of babies lay neglected in their cribs. The staff was hopelessly overworked, so the babies were rarely touched even at mealtime. What struck Carlson was the silence in the nursery. There was no crying, no babbling, not even a whimper. Upon physical examinations given at age two, Carlson found that the babies had unusually high amounts of a stress hormone in the blood called cortisol, which is known to damage the brain. Growth was stunted, and the children acted half their age.

It isn’t sufficient to feed, clothe, and care for the physical needs of children. It is now clear that touching and nurturance are critical to their survival.

Dr. James Dobson, Coming Home, Timeless Wisdom for Families, (Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton; 1998), pp. 194-195

Lack of Touching In a South American Orphanage

No more convincing evidence of the absence of parental affection exists than that compiled by Rene Spitz. In a South American orphanage, Spitz observed and recorded what happened to 97 children who were deprived of emotional and physical contact with others. Because of a lack of funds, there was not enough staff to adequately care for these children, ages 3 months to 3 years old. Nurses changed diapers and fed and bathed the children. But there was little time to hold, cuddle, and talk to them as a mother would. After three months many of them showed signs of abnormality. Besides a loss of appetite and being unable to sleep well, many of the children lay with a vacant expression in their eyes. After five months, serious deterioration set in. They lay whimpering, with troubled and twisted faces. Often, when a doctor or nurse would pick up an infant, it would scream in terror. Twenty seven, almost one third, of the children died the first year, but not from lack of food or health care. They died of a lack of touch and emotional nurture. Because of this, seven more died the second year. Only twenty one of the 97 survived, most suffering serious psychological damage.

Unfinished Business, Charles Sell, Multnomah, 1989, pp. 39ff