Dr. Sol.omon doesn't know the literature.  Children can feel movement, hear,
taste, and see long before birth.  A child might very well not know its
genetic father at birth, if the father is absent during the pregnancy.  A
child might very well not know its genetic mother at birth, if another woman
acts as surrogate during the pregnancy.  But the child most definitely knows
the sound of its mother's voice, her heartbeat, the music she likes, the
places she goes (work, grocery, music she listens to at home or in the car),
etc.  The baby knows the rhythms of her body movement.  I don't think there
is anything GENETIC about this in the sense that a baby would respond to its
genetic mother over the surrogate who carried it.  But the baby certainly
"knows" the body, the smell, the sounds, the patterns of movement, of the
person who carried the baby to term.  If the father and siblings were around
during the pregnancy, the baby will recognize their voices as well.  And
siblings will smell like the mother.

>agreement that attachment bonds develop from familiarity with particular
>individuals in the context of predictable interactions"

There is nothing in the above statement to contradict anything I have said.
Yes, the attachment bonds develop from familiarity with particular
individuals -- beginning with the first dawnings of sensory awareness in the
fetus inside the mother, long before birth.  The mothers movements
constitute predictable interactions.  Her voice talking to the baby and to
others constitute predictable interactions.

I believe the *original* source of the baby from birth to 9 months of age as
an "exterogestate foetus" is Derrick B. Jelliffe and E.F. Patrice Jelliffe
in their book "Human Milk in the Modern World" (1978, Oxford Medical
Publications).  Ah, no, I've looked it up and he cites someone else.  Here
is what he says on page 4:

"Immaturity can best be understood by the hypothesis of Bostock (1962),
which suggests that the human foetal period should be considered as of 18
months duration.  Labour occurs after only about 9 months to permit the
large head to pass through the relatively narrow birth-canal.  In other
words, the termination of uterine gestation takes place when the limit of
brain (and head) size has been reached, compatible with birth, and long
before the offspring is mature.  The human newborn can be considered to be
an 'extero-gestate' or external foetus for about the first 9 months after
birth.  During this time, he is completely dependent on the mother for
protection and warmth, and her breasts function nutritionally as an external
placenta."

Now, I have to say that I don't think there is any evidence to back up the
idea that humans would have an 18 month long gestational period if not for
our big heads.  I would say that the state of anthropological knowledge
today (2001) does not support this.  Humans tend to have *slightly* longer
stages of the life span relative to chimpanzees, with chimpanzees having
gestation lengths of about 34 weeks to humans' 38, breastfeeding for 4-5
years to humans 6-7, sexual maturity at 8-12 compared to humans 12-20, etc.
Humans live much longer than chimpanzees due to our better diets and medical
care (even non-western medical care prolongs life greatly compared to
chimpanzees, who have only rudimentary medical care behaviors).

I also don't think humans are as immature at birth as Jelliffe said in 1978.
  He says, for instance, that humans cannot find the nipple on their own
after birth, but Righard's work in Sweden shows that they can.  Undrugged
infants are capable of many quite amazing social/interactional feats in the
immediate post-partum period.  They cannot hang on to their mother, partly
because she has no fur any more.  But newborn chimpanzees also cannot hang
on to their mothers and must be carried in the mother's arm for several days
to several weeks.  Ditto for other great ape newborns and many monkey
newborns.  There really isn't all that much of a difference between humans
and the non-human primates.  Chimpanzees nurse for 4-5 years and are still
very dependent on their mothers for another 4-5 years at least.  If their
mother dies, they will most likely die or be ostracized by the group, and
not develop normally.

The Bostock 1962 reference is:

Bostock, J.  1962  Lancet i, 1033.  Evolutionary approaches to infant care.

Another source of confusion in discussing this issue is the different
meaning/use of the word "attachment" or "bonding."  Some people prefer to
use these terms to mean a gradually developing social relationship between
the infant and its caregivers, which can be the genetic mother, the
surrogate mother, the adoptive mother, the father, grandparents, siblings,
babysitters, aunts/uncles, the mailman, etc.  Basically, anyone.  And
children can develop very strong attachments to a large number of different
caregivers if these caregivers spend significant amounts of time with the
baby.  Thus, for one specific example, a baby in Mali will develop its most
intense bond with its mother, but will also be quiet content with its
father, the father's co-wives (if he has any), the father's brother's wives,
the paternal grandparents, and older siblings/half-siblings/cousins who take
care of the baby when the mother is busy.  Malian children do not cling to
their mothers -- they will go to any familiar face.  Many US children spend
so much time in isolation with their mother that they develop only an
attachment to her, and become fretful when away from her -- because they
have no other regular interactions with other people in order to develop
trusting relationships with them.  This is not to say that the mother is not
significant in Mali -- she certainly is.  It is to say that babies can form
deep emotional attachments to many different people.

There is another meaning of the term attachment/bonding, however, and this
is the meaning used in the research of Klaus and Kennell, etc., who find
serious long-lasting impacts on parental behavior depending on whether the
baby was separated from them at birth or left with them, and whether or not
the parents were left alone with the baby or had a bunch of other people in
the room all the time diluting their attention.  As little as 45 minutes of
time spent alone with their infants by fathers immediately after birth is
correlated with long-term differences in the relationship between father and
child.  Same for the mother.

While it would be nice and convenient to think that bonding can occur at any
time and develops gradually over the course of days/weeks/months, that is a
different issue altogether of the consequences of early mother/child
separation.  Yes of course adoptive parents can "bond" and love their child
in the first meaning of the term.  They cannot do so in the second meaning
of the term -- neither can parents who have had long-term separations from
their infants.

Most of these differences due to the presence/absence of early
parental-child interaction are not things that anyone would notice in any
conscious way.  Things like "how often does the mother look at the child"
and "how often does the mother speak to the child, or touch the child."  It
isn't a matter of loving/not loving your child, or being close/not being
close.

No flames, please.

Kathy Dettwyler

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