http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/opinion/02brooks.html?pagewanted=pr
int

July 2, 2006
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Of Human Bonding 
By DAVID BROOKS
If I had $37 billion to give to charity, I'd give some of it to a
foundation that would invent an Oxytocin Meter. That way we could
predict who is headed for success and who for failure. We could figure
out which organizations are thriving and which are sick.
Oxytocin is a hormone that helps mammals bond. Female rats injected with
oxytocin nurture newborns placed in their cages, which they would
otherwise attack. Prairie voles with oxytocin receptors form lifelong
monogamous bonds, whereas other varieties of voles without the receptors
mate promiscuously. 
In humans, oxytocin levels rise during childbirth, breast feeding and
sex. Humans with higher oxytocin levels are more likely to trust other
people. They are more resistant to stress and social phobias. Humans
seem to experience delicious oxytocin floods in the brain after being
with someone they love. It's no wonder neuroscientists - displaying the
branding genius for which they are famous - have nicknamed oxytocin "the
affiliative neuropeptide."
I figure if we can hang Oxytocin Meters around people's necks, we can
tell who is involved in healthy relationships and who isn't. If you
walked into an office where nobody is having an oxytocin moment, then
you'd know you're in a dysfunctional organization and it's time to get
out of there.
Now I'm not really trying to reduce all human relationships to one
hormone. But I am trying to emphasize the importance of human
attachments. We in the policy world debate education, incarceration
rates, poverty, productivity and competitiveness, and we try to figure
out which qualities individuals need to thrive in the new economy. But
often it's the space between individuals that really matters, the nature
of their attachments.
Attachment theory has been thriving for decades, but it's had little
impact on public policy. That's because the policy world is a
supermagnet for people who are emotionally avoidant. If you go to a
Congressional hearing and talk demography, you are treated like a
serious policy wonk, but if you start talking about relationships,
people look at you as if you're Oprah. 
But everything we're learning about the brain confirms the centrality of
attachments to human development and the wisdom of Adam Smith's
observation that the "chief part of human happiness arises from the
consciousness of being beloved." (Brain research rarely reveals anything
new about human nature; it just tells you which of the old verities are
most important.)
And so maybe it's time to focus a little less on individual capacities
and more on nurturing attachment. Let me give you an example of what I
mean.
Over the past few decades federal and state governments have spent
billions of dollars trying to improve high schools. Much of the effort
has gone into trying to improve individual math and reading scores. But
the effects have been modest and up to 30 percent of students drop out -
a social catastrophe. 
The dropout rates are astronomical because humans are not machines into
which you can input data. They require emotion to process information.
You take kids who didn't benefit from stable, nurturing parental care
and who have not learned how to form human attachments, and you stick
them in a school that functions like a factory for information
transmission, and the results are going to be horrible. 
The Gates Foundation recently sponsored focus groups with dropouts. The
former students knew how detrimental dropping out would be. Most were
convinced they could have graduated if they wanted to. But their
descriptions of school amounted to a portrait of emotional
disengagement: teachers were burned out and boring; discipline was
lacking; classes weren't challenging; there weren't enough tutors and
wasn't anyone to talk to; parents were uninvolved.
If school is unsatisfying but having a child or joining a gang seems as
if it would be emotionally satisfying, then many students, especially
those with insecure attachments at home, are going to follow their
powerful drive to go where the attachments seem to be. 
If I had $37 billion, I would focus it on the crucial node where
attachment skills are formed: the parental relationship during the first
few years of life. I'd invest much of it with organizations, like Circle
of Security, that help at-risk mothers and fathers develop secure bonds
with their own infants, instead of just replicating the behaviors of
their own parents. I'd focus on the real resource crisis that afflicts
the country. It's not the oil shortage. It's the oxytocin shortage.

Esther Grunis, IBCLC
Lis Maternity Hospital
Tel Aviv, Israel

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