By Carol George

We can thank Harry Harlow, a depressed, quirky scientist, for contributing to the end of the chilly child-rearing era that marked the first half of the 20th century. Using rhesus monkeys in a series of landmark experiments at his University of Wisconsin lab, nicknamed Goon Park, Harlow demonstrated empirically to hostile physicians and psychologists that, contrary to their "scientific" and "hygienic" advice to parents, maternal comfort and responsiveness are essential to normal development.

Shockingly Sterile Advice

It is shocking to read how medicine (and later, psychology) conspired from the turn of the century through the 1950s to produce a package of child-rearing dos and don'ts that today seem cruel to parents and children. Desperate to decrease infant mortality, physicians led a crusade for disease prevention techniques that included keeping newborns and sick children in lonely isolation. Parents, too, were made responsible for disease control and advised to have as little physical contact with children as possible.

In 1913, infamous behavioral psychologist John B. Watson, who admittedly disliked children, championed "intelligent" parenting, warning parents to maintain control over children's behavior or face their ruin for ignoring scientific principles. He instructed parents to encourage independence and emphasized the importance of rejecting kissing, affection, comfort or empathic care.

Blum writes:

Medicine reinforced psychology; psychology supported medicine. All of it, the lurking fears of infection, the saving graces of hygiene, the fears of ruining a child by affection, the selling of science, the desire of parents to learn from the experts, all came together to create one of the chilliest possible periods in child-rearing.

Despite his scholarly kinship with Watson, Harry Harlow was one of a growing few who believed in the developmental power of relationships. Most dissenters were psychologists and psychiatrists who directly observed children raised in the isolation regimes of hospitals and foundling homes. Harlow, however, was a rat man, a former Stanford behaviorist who took a stand as early as the 1920s against behaviorists who dismissed love. In order to examine love empirically, he raised infant rhesus monkeys with the most unlikely surrogate mothers imaginable - terry cloth-covered frames to which the babies clung and snuggled, even in the absence of food. When the surrogates were removed, the monkeys huddled and rocked, despairing and terrified.

The Perfect Mother

The strength of Blum's book is her chronicle of Harlow's scholarly search for the perfect mother, her descriptions of his experiments and her interviews with his former students, now some of the biggest names in primate research - Stephen Suomi, Gene Sackett, Leonard Rosenblum and Bob Zimmerman, all of whom recall Harlow as a witty and creative, but sometimes brutally dark, scientist.

Blum is a savvy science writer, but the psycho-biographical links between Harlow's experimental agenda and his life are left predominantly to the reader. Why did this man, dedicated to studying relationships and deprivation, seemingly abandon his first wife and his children from two marriages for his research? Were his experiments an attempt to understand and regain his own mother's love? When Harlow was 3, his brother fell ill and his family became destitute and desperate for a cure. Although he was unwavering in his belief that his mother loved him, the adult Harlow recalled her as unaffectionate and distant.

Blum's linkage between Harlow's research and his chronic depression, so severe that he was institutionalized toward the end of his career, is better than her exploration of his childhood and relationships. Harlow was explicit about wanting to uncover the processes that cause depression, processes he re-created in the lab by exposing infant monkeys to a vertical chamber he dubbed "the pit of despair."

Blum's story should have ended with Harlow's death, in 1981. Instead, in a final chapter, she examines the influence of Harlow's work on the subsequent 20-plus years of infant research. No doubt she felt obliged to put Harlow's contributions into a contemporary context. Unfortunately, the authoritative work that characterizes most of her book is abandoned for a spotty, flawed review that distorts contributions in the area germane to Harlow's focus - mother-infant attachment, my area of expertise.

Blum's parallels between mothers of avoidant infants and wire surrogates are unfounded and would create tremendous distress for parents reading these analogies. In the absence of a thoughtful discussion of attachment theory, Blum's overly romantic image of mother and baby as the sole, idealistic relationship is inappropriate and decades out of date. Attachment theory, which introduced questions about modern surrogate mothering (e.g., day care providers), is not only politically and emotionally fraught but scientifically nuanced.

What's most important is this: Harlow was committed to defining love, and he taught us much, including the essence of mothering and the darkness of mother absence and cruelty.

(back to book review index)

(back to navigation screen)

(back to top)