Joseph Chilton Pearce - Bonding and the Clash of Biological and Cultural Imperatives
How American technological childbirth prevents normal bonding and therefore weakens the social fabric that knits our world together.
Paul MacLean, for many decades head of the Department of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institutes of Health, wrote a paper on three fundamental needs critical to all mammalian life, particularly human, from the moment of birth. These three needs (each calling for voluminous description) can be stated, in their barest terms, as Audio-visual communication, Nurturing, and Play. All three are interdependent; all are established and stabilized by mother-infant bonding at birth. Deprived of bonding, all subsequent development (of both infant and mother) is compromised.
Years ago Muriel Beadle asked why is it that the human infant seems born into the world in a state of alert excitement that quickly reverts to distress followed by conscious withdrawal. (This withdrawal lasts for ten to twelve weeks on average.) Answering Beadle's query leads to a richly woven fabric of nature's proposing and man's disposing.
First, all mammals, on preparing to give birth, seek out the most hidden, preferably dark, quiet and safe haven available. At the first sign of any intrusion, of any sort - even the snapping of a twig - and the natural intelligence of the old mammalian brain, which controls birthing, signals that birthing procedures stop, and the mother wait for the coast to clear. We humans are mammals and our old mammalian brain's instincts and intelligences are still right here in our head, and absolutely in charge of birthing, interpreting environmental signals, giving and initiating intelligent responses. In situations of complete safety, unquestioned support and security, fully in touch with herself and nature, a human mother can give birth in as little as twenty minutes - sum total of time from first signal to birth-passage accomplished. But at the first sign of any interference of any sort, regardless of the nature or reason for it, the birthing process will be disrupted, slowed down, or even halted, by very ancient and powerful intelligences within.
If disruption does occur, the smooth muscular coordination of resonant responses found in a mother "in the flow," where thinking, feeling and acting are a single harmonious response, is lost, and chaos generally reigns within her - muscle fighting with muscle, instinct with instinct, inner-knowing confused by well-wishing helpers, nature's intentions clashing with culture's attentions, mother and infant losing on all fronts - all of which is sadly the norm for the majority of modern women, and a primary cause of an ever increasing world-wide upheaval.
Paul MacLean, for many decades head of the Department of Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institutes of Health, wrote a paper on three fundamental needs critical to all mammalian life, particularly human, from the moment of birth. These three needs (each calling for voluminous description) can be stated, in their barest terms, as Audio-visual communication, Nurturing, and Play. All three are interdependent; all are established and stabilized by mother-infant bonding at birth. Deprived of bonding, all subsequent development (of both infant and mother) is compromised.
Years ago Muriel Beadle asked why is it that the human infant seems born into the world in a state of alert excitement that quickly reverts to distress followed by conscious withdrawal. (This withdrawal lasts for ten to twelve weeks on average.) Answering Beadle's query leads to a richly woven fabric of nature's proposing and man's disposing.
First, all mammals, on preparing to give birth, seek out the most hidden, preferably dark, quiet and safe haven available. At the first sign of any intrusion, of any sort - even the snapping of a twig - and the natural intelligence of the old mammalian brain, which controls birthing, signals that birthing procedures stop, and the mother wait for the coast to clear. We humans are mammals and our old mammalian brain's instincts and intelligences are still right here in our head, and absolutely in charge of birthing, interpreting environmental signals, giving and initiating intelligent responses. In situations of complete safety, unquestioned support and security, fully in touch with herself and nature, a human mother can give birth in as little as twenty minutes - sum total of time from first signal to birth-passage accomplished. But at the first sign of any interference of any sort, regardless of the nature or reason for it, the birthing process will be disrupted, slowed down, or even halted, by very ancient and powerful intelligences within.
If disruption does occur, the smooth muscular coordination of resonant responses found in a mother "in the flow," where thinking, feeling and acting are a single harmonious response, is lost, and chaos generally reigns within her - muscle fighting with muscle, instinct with instinct, inner-knowing confused by well-wishing helpers, nature's intentions clashing with culture's attentions, mother and infant losing on all fronts - all of which is sadly the norm for the majority of modern women, and a primary cause of an ever increasing world-wide upheaval.