Dear all: 

I am moving on to reading Love at Goon Park.  I have just begun, but I HIGHLY recommend this book.  I had no idea that Harlow started with rats for his dissertation topic and was so revolutionary in his idea that love was something real  -- an idea that had been discredited by psychologists of his day.  Anyway rats make excellent mothers.  Minus ovaries, eyes, and olfactory bulbs, these poor mother rats still desperately sought out their pups. 

I just finished the chapter on how germ theory led to the reduction of the rampant disease in orphanages around the turn of 20th century, but created new problems.  My son always speaks about "that's so last century" relating to anything he thinks is old since he was born just before the turn of the 21st century.  I hadn't realized that the war against bed sharing and physical contact with infants began so long ago. Isolettes date back to Martin Cooney who created "child hatcheries" for premies which almost always died.  Parents gave them away to COoneey who displayed these babies in their hatcheries at shows such as the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo and the Chicago World's Fair.  He never seemed to understand why the mothers wouldn't take their infants back and felt disconnected from them.   

It is amazing that despite Harlow's research (which is some ways rather horrific by today's standards and understanding of the emotional life of primates) -- that some of the "so two centuries ago" notions are still prevalent today.  

Just heard of another case of a mother who was told her six week premature baby (who is now five weeks out of the womb and only 6 pounds) needed sleep training.  

Sigh,

Susan Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

 

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