What do we need in order to grow and develop in healthy ways?
Darcia Narvaez compares raising a child to building a house. A caregiver who is not responsive to the needs of the child is like having a crap craftsman who lays down faulty foundations in your house. This will affect the strength and quality of everything that is built on top. A child’s beginning shapes the parameters and possibilities of everything that is to come. Something that is done incorrectly from the beginning becomes harder to correct. So, when social, emotional and moral habits and skills are laid down inadequately it becomes harder and harder to correct them as time goes on.
Babies come into the world ready to engage in playful relationships and these positive relationships shape neurobiological development. The individual grows, primarily within a dyad with the caregiver, but also within a larger ecological system that has many interacting components.
Early experience profoundly impacts biological systems like the stress response, creating ‘set points’ that often remain in place for life. Early care has a big impact on how well brain-body systems develop and become established. A child matures according to a schedule but requires certain caregiving features in the environment to develop optimally. These interactions shape gene expression during developmentally sensitive periods. Genes on their own are inert. They require particular experiences provided by the environment to become active and express themselves.
Infant cries create distress in adults which indicates an evolved tendency to respond to early signs of discomfort. In evolutionary terms this would have been adaptive because it avoids alerting predators and expending energy if calories were scarce. Mammalian parents usually respond quickly to the discomfort of an infant. In small-band hunter gatherer societies, adults tend to respond to infants needs even before crying occurs, reading the infant’s early signs of discomfort.
As the infant develops warm, responsive caregiving keeps biological systems well regulated as habitual patterns of arousal become engrained. Responsive relationships in early life release opioids and the infant learns to associate relationships with pleasure. This kind of care leads to good vagal tone which is important for the functioning of the stress, cardiac, digestive, respiratory, immune and emotional systems. By contrast extensive periods of stress in the early years is a risk factor for clinical depression and anxiety. Caregiver responsiveness is a very good predictor of future mental health.
When an infant is left to cry for a long period the brain becomes flooded with stress hormones that are toxic and kill neuronal connections. Opioids are diminished and pain circuits are activated. In the absence of responsive care, the child may shut down emotion. It may appear as if the baby is fine but their system is being flooded by corrosive cortisol. Prolonged grief that may arise from feeling isolated can lead to future mood disorders. Distress that is not relieved in early life influences the genetic expression of the GABA neurotransmitter. This leads to anxiety and depression as well as a future tendency to use alcohol for the relief of stress. Where responsive care is absent the stress response system can become shaped towards oversensitivity leading to poor mental and physical health outcomes and accelerated aging and premature death. A dysregulated stress response lays the foundation for the formation of psychopathology, including tendencies towards violence.
Distracted or dysregulated caregivers are less capable of being responsive. This may be why ‘co-operative breeding’ or community child-rearing evolved. A failing caregiver cannot raise a robust and resilient child. In a community context other mothers/ parents can step in. This provides a safety net for infants that is largely now lacking in modern societies that are organised around isolated family units.
‘It takes a village to raise a child’ as the African proverb goes. Young brains grow through relational interactions with older brains. The more positive, nurturing relational interactions a child has the more socially and emotionally enriched they become. As a society we see production as primary and community secondary, with the result that while we may we materially rich, we live in a relational poverty that has adverse impact on personal and societal health.