Emotional attachement in early childhood and the curse of the working Mom

Women should have both a career and a family – that's the mantra of the last 50 years and newly-empowered women all over the world have fought hard to achieve this goal. It is hard, but doable, and this is the standard for most women today. Much has been said about the strain it puts on the women, but not that much about the strain it puts on children, especially on their emotional development.

Both capitalist and communist systems encouraged women to have children, seen as tomorrow's work force. At the same time, both systems encouraged women to go back to work as soon as possible. Never mind the children, as long as they are fed and growing according to charts, everything is fine. Put them in nurseries, daycare, have grandma babysit, all will be well, mothers are told.
The downside of this is the baby's emotional development, greatly impaired by growing up without a strong bond with the mother.

“Mother love in infancy is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health.” (John Bowlby)

British psychologist John Bowlby (1907-1990) spent a good past of his life studying the emotional development of young children and came up with the 'attachment theory'. According to him, infants and mothers are biologically programmed to form an attachment with each other within the critical period of the child's life, that is the first 24 months. If this attachment is broken during those precious 24 months it will cause serious and permanent damage to the child's development. Bowlby's most important studies were conducted in the 1950s and he studied children that had been separated from their mothers during the war. Later on, he studied children in orphanages or in tuberculosis sanatoriums were the little patients were hospitalized for years. Deprived of a strong attachment with their mothers in their early years, the children would grow 'emotionally stunted' and they will have more or less severe trust issues later in life. The primary attachment bond to the mother is the prototype for all the other relationships later in life.

All you need is love

Later on, American psychologist Harry Harlow proved the attachment theory in a heartbreaking experiment with macaque monkeys. The little monkeys were separated from their mothers and placed in metal cages with two surrogate mothers. One wire monkey provided bottles of milk feeding the baby macaques, but it was not nourishment the little monkeys craved most, but maternal comfort. They took milk from the wire surrogate, but formed an emotional attachment and spent most of their time with the soft cloth cuddly surrogate mother.


In the post-war era, Bowlby's attachment theory garnered a lot of interest. The world was in a fragile healing stage. Fast-forward two decades, it was back to business and nobody had much time for the emotional needs of whiny babies.

Today, even the most advanced European countries rarely offer new mothers the possibility to stay home with the child until it turns two. As usual, Northern European nations are at the forefront of this new trend, allowing mothers to stay at home up to a year at almost full salary. Also, many of the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe are very generous, in some cases mothers getting two years of maternity leave at 80% salary.
The situation in the United States is so awful it's not worth discussing. Among the companies praised for their maternity plans is Microsoft, offering up to 20 weeks of fully paid maternity leave plus two weeks of 'short-term disability' before the due-date. A woman preparing to give birth to a child, basically fulfilling her fundamental biological role, her sacred role, not to mention stuff like survival of the species, is eligible for 'disability' leave. Brave new world!
Unless the family is financially secure, there is no option but to put the child in some form of daycare, while the mother returns to work.
And we're back to Harlow's experiment, the little monkeys babies will be fed, but they will spend most of the day waiting for the comfort of their mothers' arms.

Did you know? The communist regime in my country offered 'weekly nurseries', a place where you could leave even two-months old babies Monday through Friday. Only see the baby over the weekend. Nowadays such institutions are no longer allowed and the main reason given is exactly the emotional harm babies would suffer. A friend once told me about the part of her childhood spent in such a place and the thing she remembered most was crying for her mother.

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