I think there is no one who hasn't heard sentences like "Won't you go down to my childhood, doctor?", "We need to go down to your childhood", "Let's go down to your childhood now". Although the famous expression "going back to your childhood", which we often encounter with humor in TV series, movies, cartoons and conversations with friends if you are a psychiatrist or psychologist, is often used humorously, it actually reflects an important truth that is accepted by almost everyone. The fact that our childhood has an impact on our personality, emotions, thoughts, and even behaviors today. I would like to take this fact further back and talk to you about how infancy and the relationship established with the mother during this period affect the individual.
The first 2 years of life are a very critical period in which our brain grows at an insane rate, our brain cells increase rapidly, and the foundations of the thought-emotion-behavior system in our brain are built in this critical period. Since the mother is the person who spends the most time with the baby and meets its physical and emotional needs in the first 2 years, it is said that the relationship established with the mother during this period affects the entire life of the individual. So, is it really like that? Let's see what science says about this.
We know that mice are used in many scientific studies because their biological systems are similar to humans. There is also very valuable information we have obtained from mouse experiments in the context of the mother-infant relationship. For example, the more the mother mouse licks, caresses, and spends time with her baby during the newborn period, the lower the stress hormones in the baby mouse. These mice, which receive more warm contact from their mothers, show less aggressive behavior when they grow up than mice that do not receive enough contact from their mothers. Not only that, the mother's affectionate touches are transmitted between generations, and mice that receive good care from their mothers provide better care to their offspring when they become mothers themselves in the future. What I want to draw your attention to in these experiments is the concept of "good care". What we mean by good care here is maternal behavior that meets the emotional needs of the baby and makes him feel safe with his warm and soft touches. Of course a baby shouldn't survive. The only condition for the baby is to meet its physical needs, feed it and protect it from negative external conditions, but it seems that this is not enough for the baby to attach to the mother, in other words, to see the mother as "mother". It would be good to talk about Harlow's famous experiment right here. In this experiment, which laid the foundations of attachment theory, Harlow raises baby monkeys alone in a cage. It offers the baby in the cage two different mother options at certain times of the day. One of them is a mother made of metal but has a feeding bottle on her chest and only feeds the baby monkey, and the other is a mother made of warm-soft plush that does not give milk but creates a sense of security in the baby monkey. The findings from the experiments are quite striking. When the baby monkey is released, he uses the wire mother only to feed himself, and spends the rest of his time in the lap of the plush mother, even though she does not give him milk. Harlow is not satisfied with this, she scares the baby monkey with an artificial monster to see which mother he is more attached to and sees which mother he will go to when he is scared. The cub reacts with great fear when he sees the monster and runs and takes shelter in the plush mother. This experiment reveals that meeting physical needs such as nutrition is not enough for a baby or child to safely bond to their mother, and that the most important thing is to exhibit a warm and affectionate motherhood that makes the child feel safe.
Again, many studies conducted on humans report that the relationship established with the mother in the first years of life is related to the child's behavioral problems, friend relationships and even school success in the following years. How does the relationship established with the mother during infancy affect the child's school success years later? If you remember the mouse experiments I mentioned at the beginning, I said that the warm contact provided by the mother to the baby reduces stress hormones. These stress hormones are also hormones that have a disruptive effect on memory and learning. It is thought that the mother-baby relationship affects the child's success through these hormones. In addition, the relationships we establish in our adult lives, our choice of spouses, and the parenting behaviors we display towards our children. There are many studies showing that we are affected by the relationship we have with our mothers in our childhood and our attachment style.
Of course, humans are multifaceted beings; Family, friends, school, work and many other social environments have an impact on people. It would not be right to conclude from all these studies that if the mother-infant relationship is good, everything will be good; if it is bad, everything will be bad. However, it seems that the future is being built with a little bit of the past.
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