- Email: [email protected]
Why did attachment stick?
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2016) 1e3
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc
Essay review
Why did attachment stick? Georgina M. Montgomery Lyman Briggs College, The Department of History, Michigan State University, 35 East Holmes Hall, 919 E. Shaw Lane, East Lansing, MI 48825-1107, USA
The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America. Marga Vicedo, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL (2014). 336 pp., Price $30.00 paper, ISBN: 9780226215136
If you visit the website of Attachment Parenting International (API), you will see references to several of the foundations of attachment which Marga Vicedo so astutely interrogates in The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America. As API states, “Attachment Parenting isn’t new. At its essence, Attachment Parenting is our biological imperative e the source of our most instinctual behaviors.”1 Psychology, child development, and studies of the brain often form the basis of contemporary discussions of attachment parenting, which frequently take place in forums like API and the plethora of websites, magazines, and social media outlets that weave together concepts of attachment, and what is commonly now referred to as “natural parenting.” These discussions are not monolithic e different forums take different perspectives on topics like working outside the home and the role of mother versus father or another caregiver e but one text has come to embody the movement more than any other, and that is the Baby Book, originally authored by William and Martha Sears.2 With millions of copies sold, and several editions published since the first publication in 1993, the Baby Book is often a polarizing text. Take for example Cynthia Eller’s piece for parenting magazine, Brain, Child, simply entitled, “Why I hate Dr. Sears.” Eller summarizes the view set forth by Sears, that attachment parenting is the only way to parent correctly, a mother’s love is “natural,” and if done right should result in a perpetually content infant.3 Although she concedes that the medical information in the Baby Book can be very useful, Eller shares her frustration about being told that only one way of parenting is correct, and any deviation from that “natural” approach is at best flawed, and at worst, damaging to your child. Eller is far from alone in this journey, with millions of parents consulting such texts while
1 2 3
E-mail address: [email protected]. “API’s Eight Principles of Parenting,” (2016). Sears, Sears, Sears, & Sears (2013). Eller (2015).
asking themselves what is “best” for their child. Often, the answer they hear is, follow your instincts. As Vicedo points out, “much is at stake in the naturalizing of emotions,” including those of mother and child (p.244). Claims about attachment either support, or challenge policies on a range of issues from public health to childcare. They also form the basis of the complex values that are entwined in the very words “mother” and “love,” and have thus played an important role in the United States’ long history of mother-blaming or momism.4 Vicedo locates work by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz, and psychoanalysts René Spitz and John Bowlby, within this tradition, aligning these scientists with social commentators like Philip Wylie, whose Generation of Vipers (1942) remains the best known example of the mother-blaming genre. Indeed, individuals like Lorenz and Wiley became allies who gained strength and status from each others’ works. Lorenz “pumped up” Wiley and helped spur his 1968 publication of The Magic Animal, the sequel to Generation of Vipers, while Wiley “encouraged . Lorenz [to become] more daring in his pronouncements about the instinctual nature of human social behavior” (p.214). Vicedo identifies such cross fertilization between public and scientific realms, and, in particular, across disciplines like psychology and ethology, as a key reason why attachment theory persevered despite wide-spread scientific critique. Whereas nowadays, interdisciplinarity is commonly identified as increasing the quality of science, the history of attachment provides an example when a “theory’s interdisciplinary character helped it survive because the strict epistemological rules and standards of evidence required within discipline boundaries [became] difficult to apply” (p.237). In short, by straddling ethology and psychology, proponents of attachment were able to draw upon allies and values from more than one discipline when responding to e or more often ignoring e scientists who identified fundamental flaws in the methodology and evidence upon which the theory was based. The central figure in attachment theory was John Bowlby, who produced a report for the World Heath Organization (WHO) in 1951 which declared the “mother as the psychic organizer of her child’s mind” and any maternal deprivation resulted in severe negative consequences for the child’s emotional and psychological development. Centering the role of instincts, and drawing upon ethological research to bolster his claims, Bowlby declared mother-love
4
Plant (2010), Apple (2006), and Oever (2012).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005 1369-8486/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Montgomery, G. M., Why did attachment stick?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005
2
G.M. Montgomery / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2016) 1e3
as natural and instinctual to the mother and crucial to the child. Furthermore, this instinct created an evolutionary stable environment for the mother-infant dyad, and as such any deviations would result in “maladaptive patterns of behavior” (p.10). One implication of Bowlby’s theory was that a mother working outside the home would “be catastrophic,” leading not only to “psychopathology but also to sociopathology.” (p.72) This demonizing of mothers, particularly of mothers who worked outside of the home, reflected the mainstream view of motherhood in America in the twentieth century, especially in the postwar period. 5 Mothers should dedicate every waking hour to their maternal role and expect no praise for doing the job well. She was, after all, just doing what came naturally (pp. 90e91). Vicedo emphasizes that Bowlby’s attachment theory was “not a mere continuation of old ideas about mother love under a new name,” but rather a new paradigm in child development (p.9). Drawing on data provided by Mary Ainsworth, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins University who conducted empirical work in Uganda and Baltimore, Bowlby created the theoretical framework for attachment.6 Ainsworth and Bowlby had a complex working relationship, which Vicedo nicely unpacks by drawing on various archives and correspondences. Although Ainsworth was subservient to Bowlby during much of his lifetime, “at the end of their careers both presented their work as a joint venture” (p.208). Vicedo identifies Ainsworth as evolving from “assistant to defender to independent researcher” and serving a key role in the “reifying and biologizing of attachment” (p.184). By the early 1960s, Bowlby was facing criticism from several scientific colleagues. In 1962, for example, the WHO published another report on deprivation of maternal care in which “all the papers, with one exception, criticized Bowlby’s views because of a lack of evidence” (p.188). Others critiqued Bowlby’s methodology, while prominent figures such as anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out flaws in his claim that the mother-child bond was universal. The one article in support of Bowlby’s theory in the 1962 volume was written by Ainsworth, whose data would become the main source of empirical evidence for Bowlby’s theoretical framework (p.190). Vicedo provides compelling evidence that, like Bowlby, Ainsworth’s research failed to meet key scientific standards. In her studies of mothers in Baltimore, for example, some students took months to write up their observations, whereas Ainsworth interpreted the observations she made in Uganda ten years after collecting them (p.201). By the end of this chapter, the reader is left asking why e with such compelling critiques of the methods and evidence used in attachment theory being set forth by a range of scientists as early as 1962 e did the theory persist? One reason Vicedo identifies for attachment theory’s endurance is Bowlby’s strategic use of allies from across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, Bowlby drew upon studies of non-human animals to support his claim that mothers were essential to healthy child development. The 1950s saw a series of meetings of the Study Group on the Psychological Development of the Child, which consisted of Bowlby, Lorenz, and Mead, among others. Under the auspices of the WHO, “the meetings focused on developments in ethology and their implications for child psychology” (p.61). Vicedo’s analysis of this aspect of the history of ethology adds to key works in the field such as Richard W. Burkhardt Jr’s Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology (2005), and Tania Munz’s recent The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language (2016).7 Vicedo
5 6 7
Plant (2010). Ainsworth (1967) and Ainsworth & Wittig (1969). Burkhardt Jr. (2005) and Munz (2016).
reveals how Konrad Lorenz emerged as a key alley of Bowlby, providing legitimacy to Bowlby’s claim that the mother-child dyad was natural (p.84). Lorenz identified both maternal care and maternal love as instinctual. Bridging science and cultural gender norms, Lorenz e whose work was garnering an increasing amount of popular interest in the 1950s and 1960s e “argued that parental and sexual roles are innate in humans, as are their ethical valuations of those roles.” In turn, Lorenz advocated for the “instinctual basis of traditional gender roles and, specifically, gendered parental roles” (p.64). Bowlby seized on the opportunity to bolster his theory with Lorenz’s ethological work and by 1958, “with Lorenz’s endorsement, Bowlby proposed a synthesis of ethology and psychoanalysis to explain children’s attachment to their mothers” (p.68). Bowlby leveraged evidence from other scientists of non-human behavior, such as Harry Harlow whose research on rhesus macaques at times supported, and at other times undermined, Bowlby’s theory of attachment. As Donna Haraway, Deborah Blum, and others have demonstrated, Harlow’s research on surrogate mothers “reached iconic status in psychology and popular culture” during the Cold War period (p.157). 8 Although Harlow’s ethological studies could be used as evidence of the significant role played by the mother in infant development, his research also demonstrated that many types of caregivers could provide “contact comfort.” Furthermore, peer relationships also shaped social adjustment.9 Thus, although “Harlow . did not deny the mother’s significance . he rejected the view that the mother, and the mother alone, could guarantee adult adjustment” (p.173). After all, why would evolution result in just one affectional system rather than many? As Vicedo summarizes, “These are not surrogate mothers, but surrogates for love: ‘From an evolutionary point of view there is gain in having two independent affectional systems that can each in part compensate for deficiencies in the other’” (p.175). In response to Harlow’s conclusions, Bowlby was selective in the studies he cited, ignoring Harlow’s work on peers, for example, to emphasize the role of the mother and thus align Harlow’s research with his own theory of attachment. The Nature and Nurture of Love is primarily an analysis of debates that took place within and across scientific communities. Although the broader cultural context of the Cold War is discussed, the impact of the science on popular understandings of parenting and child development is less developed. We learn that the WHO’s commission of Bowlby to write his 1951 report played a fundamental role in him gaining and maintaining scientific status, but Vicedo concedes that “it is difficult to gauge how far studies of maternal deprivation and the WHO report influenced public opinion” (p.81). The reader is left wondering how Bowlby’s work shaped the content of popular parenting manuals in the postwar period, or how attachment theory informed discussions taking place in moms’ groups in the United States during that time.10 Equally, with so much discussion of attachment parenting taking place in contemporary parenting forums, the reader is left to wonder how much of the attachment theory discussed in 2016 stems from the work of figures like Bowlby. Vicedo’s focus on scientific debates, rather than their translation into the popular realm, may stem from her apparent discomfort with straying too far away from the historian’s position of neutrality, (p. 238). She is, however, at her most compelling when she is more overt about the varied and important political consequences of the theory she historicizes so well. Indeed, when I have
8 9 10
Blum (2011) and Haraway (1990). Harlow & Harlow, 1966. Grant (1994).
Please cite this article in press as: Montgomery, G. M., Why did attachment stick?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005
G.M. Montgomery / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2016) 1e3
assigned chapters of The Nature and Nurture of Love in the undergraduate classroom, the connections with contemporary debates concerning the politics surrounding parenting have provided the most effective access point to the text for non-history majors. In an interdisciplinary undergraduate course focused on motherhood or parenting, The Nature and Nurture of Love, would be a wonderful companion to works such as Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America (2010), which would provide additional cultural background, and perhaps recent scholarship in sociology and health policy such as the edited volume Parenting Culture Studies (2014).11 However, in a graduate seminar, The Nature and Nurture of Love could easily be used to facilitate discussions concerning the history of psychology, ethology, and the political ramifications of scientific studies of motherhood and parenting. For undergraduates, graduates, and scholars alike then, there are certainly many lessons to be found in Vicedo’s history of attachment theory. Promoting a loving bond between a child and her caregiver is laudable and important, but reducing this relationship purely to a mother’s natural instinct simultaneously limits, undervalues and oversimplifies the role of love in child development and does an incredible disservice to parents, caregivers and children. This history is also one of failure e on the part of the scientific community and the public e to effectively communicate the clear flaws in Bowlby’s work. Vicedo’s central argument is that, despite their enduring persistence through the second half of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, theories of attachment and naturalizing parental roles based on Bowlby’s work do not rest upon sound scientific evidence (p.234). Indeed, as she demonstrates repeatedly, this theoretical framework has remained popular despite extensive criticism of its methods and evidence within the scientific community. By demonstrating how the theory
11
3
persisted despite being based on such “shaky” scientific ground, Vicedo reminds us of the important role historians of science play in unpacking the past while also shedding light on contemporary discussions taking place at the intersection of science and society. References Ainsworth, M. (1967). Infancy in Uganda: Infant care and the growth of love. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Ainsworth, M., & Wittig, B. A. (1969). Attachment and exploratory behaviour of oneyear-olds in a strange situation. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), Determinants of infant behaviour 4 (pp. 111e136). London: Methuen. API’s Eight Principles of Parenting. (2016). Attachment parenting international Accessed 10.05.16 http://www.attachmentparenting.org/principles/api. Apple, R. (2006). Perfect Motherhood: Science and childrearing in America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Blum, D. (2011). Love at goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of affection. New York: Basic Books. Burkhardt, R., Jr. (2005). Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the founding of ethology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eller, C. (2015). “Why I hate Dr. Sears” in brain, child. http://www.brainchildmag. com/2015/06/why-i-hate-dr-sears/. Assessed 10.05.16. Grant, J. (1994). Caught between common sense and science: the cornell child Study clubs, 1925e1945. History of Education Quarterly, 34(4), 433e452. Haraway, D. (1990). Primate Visions: Gender, race, and nature in the World of modern science. New York: Routledge. Harlow, H., & Harlow, M. (1966). Learning to love. American Scientist, 54(3), 244e 272. Lee, E., Bristow, J., Faircloth, C., & MacVarish, J. (2014). Parenting culture studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Munz, T. (2016). The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oever, R. (2012). Mama’s Boy: Momism and homophobia in postwar American culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Plant, R. (2010). Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sears, W., Sears, M., Sears, R., & Sears, J. (2013). The Baby Book. New York City: Little, Brown, and Co.
Plant (2010) and Lee, Bristow, Faircloth, & MacVarish (2014).
Please cite this article in press as: Montgomery, G. M., Why did attachment stick?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc
Essay review
Why did attachment stick? Georgina M. Montgomery Lyman Briggs College, The Department of History, Michigan State University, 35 East Holmes Hall, 919 E. Shaw Lane, East Lansing, MI 48825-1107, USA
The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America. Marga Vicedo, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL (2014). 336 pp., Price $30.00 paper, ISBN: 9780226215136
If you visit the website of Attachment Parenting International (API), you will see references to several of the foundations of attachment which Marga Vicedo so astutely interrogates in The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America. As API states, “Attachment Parenting isn’t new. At its essence, Attachment Parenting is our biological imperative e the source of our most instinctual behaviors.”1 Psychology, child development, and studies of the brain often form the basis of contemporary discussions of attachment parenting, which frequently take place in forums like API and the plethora of websites, magazines, and social media outlets that weave together concepts of attachment, and what is commonly now referred to as “natural parenting.” These discussions are not monolithic e different forums take different perspectives on topics like working outside the home and the role of mother versus father or another caregiver e but one text has come to embody the movement more than any other, and that is the Baby Book, originally authored by William and Martha Sears.2 With millions of copies sold, and several editions published since the first publication in 1993, the Baby Book is often a polarizing text. Take for example Cynthia Eller’s piece for parenting magazine, Brain, Child, simply entitled, “Why I hate Dr. Sears.” Eller summarizes the view set forth by Sears, that attachment parenting is the only way to parent correctly, a mother’s love is “natural,” and if done right should result in a perpetually content infant.3 Although she concedes that the medical information in the Baby Book can be very useful, Eller shares her frustration about being told that only one way of parenting is correct, and any deviation from that “natural” approach is at best flawed, and at worst, damaging to your child. Eller is far from alone in this journey, with millions of parents consulting such texts while
1 2 3
E-mail address: [email protected]. “API’s Eight Principles of Parenting,” (2016). Sears, Sears, Sears, & Sears (2013). Eller (2015).
asking themselves what is “best” for their child. Often, the answer they hear is, follow your instincts. As Vicedo points out, “much is at stake in the naturalizing of emotions,” including those of mother and child (p.244). Claims about attachment either support, or challenge policies on a range of issues from public health to childcare. They also form the basis of the complex values that are entwined in the very words “mother” and “love,” and have thus played an important role in the United States’ long history of mother-blaming or momism.4 Vicedo locates work by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz, and psychoanalysts René Spitz and John Bowlby, within this tradition, aligning these scientists with social commentators like Philip Wylie, whose Generation of Vipers (1942) remains the best known example of the mother-blaming genre. Indeed, individuals like Lorenz and Wiley became allies who gained strength and status from each others’ works. Lorenz “pumped up” Wiley and helped spur his 1968 publication of The Magic Animal, the sequel to Generation of Vipers, while Wiley “encouraged . Lorenz [to become] more daring in his pronouncements about the instinctual nature of human social behavior” (p.214). Vicedo identifies such cross fertilization between public and scientific realms, and, in particular, across disciplines like psychology and ethology, as a key reason why attachment theory persevered despite wide-spread scientific critique. Whereas nowadays, interdisciplinarity is commonly identified as increasing the quality of science, the history of attachment provides an example when a “theory’s interdisciplinary character helped it survive because the strict epistemological rules and standards of evidence required within discipline boundaries [became] difficult to apply” (p.237). In short, by straddling ethology and psychology, proponents of attachment were able to draw upon allies and values from more than one discipline when responding to e or more often ignoring e scientists who identified fundamental flaws in the methodology and evidence upon which the theory was based. The central figure in attachment theory was John Bowlby, who produced a report for the World Heath Organization (WHO) in 1951 which declared the “mother as the psychic organizer of her child’s mind” and any maternal deprivation resulted in severe negative consequences for the child’s emotional and psychological development. Centering the role of instincts, and drawing upon ethological research to bolster his claims, Bowlby declared mother-love
4
Plant (2010), Apple (2006), and Oever (2012).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005 1369-8486/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Montgomery, G. M., Why did attachment stick?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005
2
G.M. Montgomery / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2016) 1e3
as natural and instinctual to the mother and crucial to the child. Furthermore, this instinct created an evolutionary stable environment for the mother-infant dyad, and as such any deviations would result in “maladaptive patterns of behavior” (p.10). One implication of Bowlby’s theory was that a mother working outside the home would “be catastrophic,” leading not only to “psychopathology but also to sociopathology.” (p.72) This demonizing of mothers, particularly of mothers who worked outside of the home, reflected the mainstream view of motherhood in America in the twentieth century, especially in the postwar period. 5 Mothers should dedicate every waking hour to their maternal role and expect no praise for doing the job well. She was, after all, just doing what came naturally (pp. 90e91). Vicedo emphasizes that Bowlby’s attachment theory was “not a mere continuation of old ideas about mother love under a new name,” but rather a new paradigm in child development (p.9). Drawing on data provided by Mary Ainsworth, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins University who conducted empirical work in Uganda and Baltimore, Bowlby created the theoretical framework for attachment.6 Ainsworth and Bowlby had a complex working relationship, which Vicedo nicely unpacks by drawing on various archives and correspondences. Although Ainsworth was subservient to Bowlby during much of his lifetime, “at the end of their careers both presented their work as a joint venture” (p.208). Vicedo identifies Ainsworth as evolving from “assistant to defender to independent researcher” and serving a key role in the “reifying and biologizing of attachment” (p.184). By the early 1960s, Bowlby was facing criticism from several scientific colleagues. In 1962, for example, the WHO published another report on deprivation of maternal care in which “all the papers, with one exception, criticized Bowlby’s views because of a lack of evidence” (p.188). Others critiqued Bowlby’s methodology, while prominent figures such as anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out flaws in his claim that the mother-child bond was universal. The one article in support of Bowlby’s theory in the 1962 volume was written by Ainsworth, whose data would become the main source of empirical evidence for Bowlby’s theoretical framework (p.190). Vicedo provides compelling evidence that, like Bowlby, Ainsworth’s research failed to meet key scientific standards. In her studies of mothers in Baltimore, for example, some students took months to write up their observations, whereas Ainsworth interpreted the observations she made in Uganda ten years after collecting them (p.201). By the end of this chapter, the reader is left asking why e with such compelling critiques of the methods and evidence used in attachment theory being set forth by a range of scientists as early as 1962 e did the theory persist? One reason Vicedo identifies for attachment theory’s endurance is Bowlby’s strategic use of allies from across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, Bowlby drew upon studies of non-human animals to support his claim that mothers were essential to healthy child development. The 1950s saw a series of meetings of the Study Group on the Psychological Development of the Child, which consisted of Bowlby, Lorenz, and Mead, among others. Under the auspices of the WHO, “the meetings focused on developments in ethology and their implications for child psychology” (p.61). Vicedo’s analysis of this aspect of the history of ethology adds to key works in the field such as Richard W. Burkhardt Jr’s Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology (2005), and Tania Munz’s recent The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language (2016).7 Vicedo
5 6 7
Plant (2010). Ainsworth (1967) and Ainsworth & Wittig (1969). Burkhardt Jr. (2005) and Munz (2016).
reveals how Konrad Lorenz emerged as a key alley of Bowlby, providing legitimacy to Bowlby’s claim that the mother-child dyad was natural (p.84). Lorenz identified both maternal care and maternal love as instinctual. Bridging science and cultural gender norms, Lorenz e whose work was garnering an increasing amount of popular interest in the 1950s and 1960s e “argued that parental and sexual roles are innate in humans, as are their ethical valuations of those roles.” In turn, Lorenz advocated for the “instinctual basis of traditional gender roles and, specifically, gendered parental roles” (p.64). Bowlby seized on the opportunity to bolster his theory with Lorenz’s ethological work and by 1958, “with Lorenz’s endorsement, Bowlby proposed a synthesis of ethology and psychoanalysis to explain children’s attachment to their mothers” (p.68). Bowlby leveraged evidence from other scientists of non-human behavior, such as Harry Harlow whose research on rhesus macaques at times supported, and at other times undermined, Bowlby’s theory of attachment. As Donna Haraway, Deborah Blum, and others have demonstrated, Harlow’s research on surrogate mothers “reached iconic status in psychology and popular culture” during the Cold War period (p.157). 8 Although Harlow’s ethological studies could be used as evidence of the significant role played by the mother in infant development, his research also demonstrated that many types of caregivers could provide “contact comfort.” Furthermore, peer relationships also shaped social adjustment.9 Thus, although “Harlow . did not deny the mother’s significance . he rejected the view that the mother, and the mother alone, could guarantee adult adjustment” (p.173). After all, why would evolution result in just one affectional system rather than many? As Vicedo summarizes, “These are not surrogate mothers, but surrogates for love: ‘From an evolutionary point of view there is gain in having two independent affectional systems that can each in part compensate for deficiencies in the other’” (p.175). In response to Harlow’s conclusions, Bowlby was selective in the studies he cited, ignoring Harlow’s work on peers, for example, to emphasize the role of the mother and thus align Harlow’s research with his own theory of attachment. The Nature and Nurture of Love is primarily an analysis of debates that took place within and across scientific communities. Although the broader cultural context of the Cold War is discussed, the impact of the science on popular understandings of parenting and child development is less developed. We learn that the WHO’s commission of Bowlby to write his 1951 report played a fundamental role in him gaining and maintaining scientific status, but Vicedo concedes that “it is difficult to gauge how far studies of maternal deprivation and the WHO report influenced public opinion” (p.81). The reader is left wondering how Bowlby’s work shaped the content of popular parenting manuals in the postwar period, or how attachment theory informed discussions taking place in moms’ groups in the United States during that time.10 Equally, with so much discussion of attachment parenting taking place in contemporary parenting forums, the reader is left to wonder how much of the attachment theory discussed in 2016 stems from the work of figures like Bowlby. Vicedo’s focus on scientific debates, rather than their translation into the popular realm, may stem from her apparent discomfort with straying too far away from the historian’s position of neutrality, (p. 238). She is, however, at her most compelling when she is more overt about the varied and important political consequences of the theory she historicizes so well. Indeed, when I have
8 9 10
Blum (2011) and Haraway (1990). Harlow & Harlow, 1966. Grant (1994).
Please cite this article in press as: Montgomery, G. M., Why did attachment stick?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005
G.M. Montgomery / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2016) 1e3
assigned chapters of The Nature and Nurture of Love in the undergraduate classroom, the connections with contemporary debates concerning the politics surrounding parenting have provided the most effective access point to the text for non-history majors. In an interdisciplinary undergraduate course focused on motherhood or parenting, The Nature and Nurture of Love, would be a wonderful companion to works such as Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America (2010), which would provide additional cultural background, and perhaps recent scholarship in sociology and health policy such as the edited volume Parenting Culture Studies (2014).11 However, in a graduate seminar, The Nature and Nurture of Love could easily be used to facilitate discussions concerning the history of psychology, ethology, and the political ramifications of scientific studies of motherhood and parenting. For undergraduates, graduates, and scholars alike then, there are certainly many lessons to be found in Vicedo’s history of attachment theory. Promoting a loving bond between a child and her caregiver is laudable and important, but reducing this relationship purely to a mother’s natural instinct simultaneously limits, undervalues and oversimplifies the role of love in child development and does an incredible disservice to parents, caregivers and children. This history is also one of failure e on the part of the scientific community and the public e to effectively communicate the clear flaws in Bowlby’s work. Vicedo’s central argument is that, despite their enduring persistence through the second half of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, theories of attachment and naturalizing parental roles based on Bowlby’s work do not rest upon sound scientific evidence (p.234). Indeed, as she demonstrates repeatedly, this theoretical framework has remained popular despite extensive criticism of its methods and evidence within the scientific community. By demonstrating how the theory
11
3
persisted despite being based on such “shaky” scientific ground, Vicedo reminds us of the important role historians of science play in unpacking the past while also shedding light on contemporary discussions taking place at the intersection of science and society. References Ainsworth, M. (1967). Infancy in Uganda: Infant care and the growth of love. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Ainsworth, M., & Wittig, B. A. (1969). Attachment and exploratory behaviour of oneyear-olds in a strange situation. In B. M. Foss (Ed.), Determinants of infant behaviour 4 (pp. 111e136). London: Methuen. API’s Eight Principles of Parenting. (2016). Attachment parenting international Accessed 10.05.16 http://www.attachmentparenting.org/principles/api. Apple, R. (2006). Perfect Motherhood: Science and childrearing in America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Blum, D. (2011). Love at goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of affection. New York: Basic Books. Burkhardt, R., Jr. (2005). Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the founding of ethology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eller, C. (2015). “Why I hate Dr. Sears” in brain, child. http://www.brainchildmag. com/2015/06/why-i-hate-dr-sears/. Assessed 10.05.16. Grant, J. (1994). Caught between common sense and science: the cornell child Study clubs, 1925e1945. History of Education Quarterly, 34(4), 433e452. Haraway, D. (1990). Primate Visions: Gender, race, and nature in the World of modern science. New York: Routledge. Harlow, H., & Harlow, M. (1966). Learning to love. American Scientist, 54(3), 244e 272. Lee, E., Bristow, J., Faircloth, C., & MacVarish, J. (2014). Parenting culture studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Munz, T. (2016). The Dancing Bees: Karl von Frisch and the Discovery of the Honeybee Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oever, R. (2012). Mama’s Boy: Momism and homophobia in postwar American culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Plant, R. (2010). Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sears, W., Sears, M., Sears, R., & Sears, J. (2013). The Baby Book. New York City: Little, Brown, and Co.
Plant (2010) and Lee, Bristow, Faircloth, & MacVarish (2014).
Please cite this article in press as: Montgomery, G. M., Why did attachment stick?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.05.005