breastfeeding

“The addict’s reliance on the drug to reawaken her dulled feelings is no adolescent caprice.
The dullness is itself the consequence of an emotional malfunction not of her making.”

Gabor Mate, MD, Author,
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction

More on Pleasure, Pain and the Developing Brain

The development of each new human being involves the complete evolutionary process of life on the planet. Native traditions recognize and honor this fact. Western civilization, driven by an anti-feminine passion for male intellect does not, thus the classic mind-body split. One self-world view nurtures the deep ecology that we are, the other attempts to dominate and control nature, including our own.

In each of us is the entire process of creation, what Joseph Chilton Pearce calls Evolution’s End. Each stage of development anticipates the past and creates the necessary foundation for the next unknowable leap forward to unfold. The developing fetus in the liquid world of the womb, for example, has no use for lungs and yet creates lungs anticipating an oxygenated environment it ‘knows’ nothing about. The entire spectrum of human development implies this unfolding anticipation and unknowable expectation.

What is bonding, the very heart of species survival or a nice sentiment? Are the experiences we call bonding or attachment the same today as 100 years ago, before commercial interests made it shameful to breastfeed, fetal monitors and surgical-cesarean births? What is the relationship between nurturing and bonding? Do stronger bonds result in greater nurturing? Is reduced bonding a prescription for generational cycles of neglect and abuse? Critical questions are being raised by visionaries in the field of human development. What are the consequences of interfering with bonding and nature’s expectation for nurturing?

Responding to Touch the Future and National Institute for PLAY’s important PLAY SCIENCE DVD:

Creative play is the foundation for social-political freedom and liberty which is not possible when abnormal brain development is induces by a failure of affcctional bonding in the maternal-infant –child relationship.

Depression, stereotypical rocking behaviors and compulsive stimulus-seeking behaviors, all produced by sensory deprivation to the developing brain that is induced by failed maternal-infant/child affectional bonding, robs the developing offspring of the capacity to engage in touching and body movement that is essential for creative/spontaneous play; and to later development of behaviors associated with personal freedom and liberty.

Violence, particularly child abuse, is another destructive consequence of these early life experiences that prevents the development of creative/spontaneous play, which is the foundation for social-political freedom and liberty.

Figure 1, a photo montage, illustrates the pathological emotional behaviors induced by early
deprivation of physical affection. Figure

2 illustrates the avoidance of physical contact with other animals and humans in mother-deprived monkeys; and positive affectional behaviors in monkeys reared with their mothers.

Table 1 presents how our Two Cultural Brains are formedby Pain and Pleasure, which determines the kind of Culture we become.

Explore the full essay

OPEN LETTER TO FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA

ON THE HIGH RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IMPAIRED BREASTFEEDING BONDING AND INFANT MORTALITY NOT ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE SURGEON GENERALʼS CALL TO ACTON TO SUPPORT BREASTFEEDING 2011; CALLS FOR WEANING AGE OF EVERY INFANT/ CHILD BE RECORDED AND PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE IMMUNOLOGICAL RECORD BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS, CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION; AND ESTABLISH BY LAW THE GENDER EQUALITY OF REPRESENTATION IN THE CONGRESS.

The excess health risks associated with not breastfeeding are well known and acknowledged by The Surgeon Generalʼs Call to Acton to Support Breastfeeding 2011 but the psychosocial effects are little mentioned except to note the enhanced feeling of bonding by breastfeeding with no mention of its powerful relationship to infant mortality (p.3). Child Obesity, not mentioned, is a lesser health risk than infant/child mortality.

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/breastfeeding/calltoactiontosupportbreastfeeding.pdf
http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/IM_BF_Homicide_Stats_Update_2010.html

The 2010 AAP Policy Statement: Child Fatality Review. Pediatrics 2010; 126; 592-596
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/126/3/592.pdf states:

The preventable death of a child is an unparalleled tragedy for a family. Similarly, a nationʼs ability to reduce child mortality rates is a measure of that society’s overall well being, and failure to address preventable causes of child mortality is a national tragedy. Each year in the United States, more than 17 000 infants and children die from injury, which remains the leading cause of child mortality in the United States.1 Add to this the number of preventable noninjury deaths, including many deaths related to prematurity, and it becomes clear that a majority of American child deaths are preventable.

Introduction

This author has initiated a dialogue on this AAP Policy Statement that can be found In Pediatrics Online. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/126/3/592

Breastfeeding Mothers are rarely violent toward their nursing infants and children which points to a solution for preventing the high infant mortality rate and its relationship to homicide.
http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/IM_BF_Homicide_Stats.pdf

This writer wrote DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on 27 January 2011, which outlined these facts with additional supporting evidence but have received no acknowledgement of this and other communications.
http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Lt_Sebelius_DHHS_1.27.11.pdf

Additional Commentary and Letter of 22 February 2011 to First Lady Obama HERE.

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world, to a large or small extent, has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime, guilt ~ and there is the story of mankind. John Steinbeck, East of Eden, 1952

Breastfeeding bonding and baby-carrying bonding are the first events of life, which the newborn/infant/child learns about love and non-violence. Love is first learned at the breast of mother and by being carried on her body ~ like in utero, where the first lessons of being connected with mother are learned. Baby-carrying is the external umbilical cord that assures that the baby is connected with mother, and breastfeeding bonding for 2.5 years, or longer, has been found to be essential for optimizing brain-behavioral development for the prevention of depression and suicide, which makes possible peaceful, harmonious and egalitarian behaviors later in life possible.

These two behavioral measures of maternal-infant/child affectional bonding: 1) baby-carrying during the first year of life and 2) breastfeeding for 2.5 years or greater are the singular developmental events that can PREVENT infant mortality and suicide in the teen and adult years of life. These early life events form the foundation for the neurointegrative brain (joy, happiness and love) as opposed to the development of the neurodissociative brain (depression, alienation, homicidal and suicidal violence).

These Two Cultural Brains are formed during the early years of brain-behavioral development, which makes possible sexual affectional bonding relationships that reinforce the Neurofunctioning Brain, Egalitarian and Harmonious Relationships. The following data are provided In support of this reality.
http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Our_Two_Cultural_Brains.pdf

Baby-carrying bonding was found to predict with 80% accuracy the peaceful and violent behaviors ("killing, torturing, mutilation of enemy captured in warfare") in 49 tribal cultures distributed throughout the world. 100% prediction of Peaceful or Violent cultures was possible when youth sexuality was permitted or punished was added as a predictive variable (Prescott, 1975,1977, 1979,1990, 1996, 2005).

Weaning age of 2.5 years or longer in 26 tribal cultures was found to be characteristic of 77% (20/26) of tribal cultures rated low or absent in suicide. 82% (14/17) cultures with weaning age 2.5 yrs and greater and support youth sexuality are rated low or absent in suicides (Prescott, 2005).

Baby-carrying during the first year of life and weaning age of 2.5 years or longer was common to 63% of the cultures studied, thus indicating the high correlation of these child rearing practices (Prescott, 1990).

TABLE 1. SUICIDE CULTURES AS A FUNCTION OF WEANING AGE, INFANT PAIN AND ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
WEANING AGE 2.5 YEARS OR LONGER

Attached are a number of research documents, references and tables that support these conclusions.
Please review and share.

JWP