Sunday Star Times, 3rd May 2009, Oliver James.
Happy babies make happy adults, writes Oliver James, thanks to a natural drug triggered by love.
Although there is overwhelming evidence that if children are maltreated in the early years it affects their brain adversely, the good news is that the reverse is also true: supportive, loving nurture does cause desirable brain chemistry. In particular, as an important new book, The Compassionate Mind, by the psychologist Paul Gilbert, explains, levels of neuropeptide oxytocin are critically affected for the better.
Its main effect is on our relationship with other people. Although it is not as extreme as the drug ecstasy – which causes strangers to wrap themselves around each other – it greatly increases feelings of love and affiliation. Loved-up on oxytocin, natural opinoids are released, creating a sense of relaxation, a reduction in the tendency to interpret others as threatening and an increase in confidence that they will be nice to know.
Christchurch-based child psychologist Michelle van Dyk is well aware of the effects of oxytocin. “Not only does it have a key role during the birth and in later mother-infant bonding throughout the early neonatal period but it turns out that this neuro-hormone has a critical role to play in early childhood that will determine how well a person is later able to relate to others, form attachments, have a successful life partnership and then parent their own offspring,” she says.
It starts in pregnancy. Unstressed mothers who report positive feelings about the pregnancy and foetus before the birth have higher oxytocin levels. These are probably passed to the baby through the placenta. Postnatally, mothers with high prenatal levels tune into and bond better with their infants.
Breastfeeding mothers have more oxytocin. If stressed half an hour after a feed, they secrete less cortisol, being less easily thrown into a flap.
“In the human infant, it is very apparent that without a sensitive, responsive and devoted primary care-giver in attendance day and night, the infant would fail to thrive,” explains van Dyk. “From birth onward, social interactions are essential for normal development. Young infants and toddlers lack the ability to self-regulate and must learn this skill from repeated reciprocal interactions from a responsive, caring adult.”
We know all about the cycle of emotional deprivation, and its effects on the brain’s electrochemistry are becoming better known by the year – abnormal cortisol levels, probably similar depletion of dopamine and serotonin, quite apart from the decreased brain growth that is the result of severe maltreatment.
“Promoting a society where parents are supported to be able to devote the necessary time and love to their infants and young children without the necessity to return to work prematurely is a vital step that will be necessary to foster the sort of caring, co-operative and pro-social communities we would all like our children to grow up in,” says van Dyk.