Human Touch Take 2

Harlow's Studies on Dependency in Monkeys

Harlow's Studies on Dependency in Monkeys are a collection of experiments, conducted in 1958, that disproved much of the standard literature about childhood dependency at the time. Prior to Harlow, the belief was that children showed a high dependence on their mothers due to their ability to provide food¹. However, through a series of intense² experiments, Harlow showed that what children most desired was appropriate touch and stability.

I saw the video of the Harlow Studies a year into working with traumatized youth. I was attending a work conference in South Dakota³ and in the midst of an excellent presentation about the importance of the human touch⁴. The video repeatedly showed that a baby monkey would consistently choose a welcoming cloth mother without food over a non-welcoming wire mother with a bottle. Harlow hypothesized this would be the case but even he was astonished when the baby monkey spent 18 times more of his day with the cloth mother. 

The video also showed the stress and chaos the monkey experienced when his comforting maternal figure was removed. Without a comforting figure the monkey did not know where to look for answers. For monkeys and humans this lack of consistency and stability in early childhood often leads to chaotic relationships and lives as adults.

I continued to research why the residents at my school exhibited certain behaviors. Lack of affection during childhood resulting in unhealthy attachment issues quickly became a recurrent theme.⁵ There are myriad physical and emotional deficiencies that result from the lack of physical compassion. In these scenarios, the old adage “children are resilient,” does not apply. They need consistent research-based practices and love to recover.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to help a child feel like they belong and counteract childhood trauma is through appropriate touch. However, the combination of a society devoid of human touch⁶ and the understandable hesitancy of adults due to the trauma history of these children often leads to at-risk youth being treated like lepers. No matter the intention this reemphasizes a child’s belief that they are unworthy of affection and love.

The majority of the children where I work crave physical touch. Whether it be a pat on the head, a side hug, or a full-on wrestling match physical touch has a lasting, positive effect. The irrefutable effects of touch are too abundant and profound to ignore.

Consistent, positive human touch matters from the second a child is born and continues to matter throughout their lifetime. A review of research discovered that preterm newborns receiving three 15-minute sessions of touch therapy a day for 5-10 days gained 47% more weight than other preterm newborns that received standard care (Keltner 2010). In contrast, children that grow up in orphanages where human touch is rare often fail to reach their expected height and weight and exhibit behavior problems (Keltner 2010).

The benefits do not stop once a baby leaves the crib. French psychologist Nicolas Gueguen found that when teachers display positive physical touch in the form of a head pat students are three times more likely to raise their hands. Another study showed that a pat on the head from a librarian increases the likelihood a child will state they like the library and want to return (Keltner 2010.) Other studies have found that massages during pregnancy increase comfort and reduce prenatal depression, eye contact and pats from doctors increase survival rates, and that NBA teams that touch more win more games (Keltner 2010).

In renowned childhood psychiatrist Bruce Perry’s⁷ heartbreaking but essential book, The Boy Who Was Raised as A Dog, there is a chapter called Skin Hunger that perfectly encapsulates the symptoms caused by and the treatment for lack of touch. The chapter discusses a 4-year-old girl that weighed 26 pounds despite being hooked up to a feeding tube for weeks. The child was even falsely diagnosed with the first case of “childhood anorexia” (Perry 82).

Perry began working with the child and her mother and realized that due to her own traumatic upbringing, the Mom was barely interacting with the child. To counteract this Perry did not throw in more medicine or additional diagnoses. Instead, he had them live with a nurturing and loving foster mother he had encountered previously.

The woman he calls Mama P would rock, nurture, caress, and love her foster children that were often physically mature but had the emotional mentalities of toddlers. Many doctors looked down on Mama P’s methods as enabling and inappropriate but Perry realized they were brilliant and necessary.

Discussing a 7-year-old who was raised by a drug-addicted prostitute until age 4 and had lived in 9 different placements⁸ before coming into her care Mama P stated, "I just hold him and rock him. I just love him. At night when he wakes up scared and wanders the house, I just put him in bed next to me, rub his back, and sing a little and he falls asleep...Do you get angry when a baby fusses? No. This is what babies do...It's just that Robert has been a baby for 7 years (Perry 94, 95)."

So what happened when Mama P moved in with the 4-year-old and her emotionally unavailable mother?⁹ The child that had not gained weight in months gained 10 pounds in one month (Perry 97)!¹⁰ The three of them lived together for almost a year and through Mama P's modeling and patience mother and daughter both improved.¹¹

This story proves that in regard to trauma, “age-appropriate” treatments and interactions function on a sliding scale. We all need to be less like our touchless society and more like Mama P. In the words of Perry¹² , "These children had never received the repeated, patterned physical nurturing needed to develop a well-regulated and responsive stress response system. They had never learned they were loved and safe; they didn't have the internal security needed to safely explore the world and grow without fear. They were starving for touch-and Mama P gave it to them (Perry 95-96)."

Dacher, Keltner. “Hands on Research: The Science of Touch.” Greater Good, 2010, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hands_on_research#:~:text=There%20are%20studies%20showing%20that,aka%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20love%20hormone.%E2%80%9D.

Perry, Bruce D., and Maia Szalavitz. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us about Loss, Love, and Healing. Basic Books, 2017.

1. I would guess women did not conduct these studies

2. If you have not watched the video the baby monkeys were not having a great time

3. flex

4. As Spike Jonze says, “the past is a story we tell ourselves.” I know I was at the conference. I do know that if the human skin were somehow taken off and stretched out it would be 22 meters in length. This was very important to the presenter.

5. Some students made incredibly intense connections with peers within minutes and others took weeks to speak

6. Our country has an extremely unhealthy and concerning relationship with human touch. A famous study in the 60s by psychologist Sidney Jourard studies conversations in cafes among friends. In England during the average conversation, the friends touched each other 0 times and in the United States, the friends touched twice. However, the number in France the number skyrocketed to 110 times per conversation and in Puerto Rico, it was 180 times (Keltner 2010).

7. His most recent book, What Happened to You, is highly recommended by Oprah. I am sure the fact that Oprah coauthored the book has nothing to do with this.

8. The child had been diagnosed with ADHD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Bipolar disorder, Schizophrenic disorder, and various learning disorders.

9. Through no fault of her own

10. 35% of her bodyweight

11. Unfortunately, some wounds never completely heal but both have gone on to live “productive” lives.

12. Remember this guy wrote a book with Oprah