Studies conducted on animals, particularly other primates, indicate that there may be a biological basis for what Verrier calls the primal wound. Reite in 1978 demonstrated that when monkey infants were separated from their mothers they experienced decreases in body temperature and sleep pattern changes, even when the separated infants were immediately adopted by another adult female. Reite suggests that these physiological changes are not due to the physical absence of the mother, but are caused, at least in part, by the perception of loss of the mother on the part of the infant, i.e., the cause is essentially psychological.
Studies in primates show that if an infant is deprived of its mother soon after birth, the infant’s brain does not develop normally. For example, the number and sensitivity of the infant’s brain receptor sites for endorphins – the internal morphinelike chemicals that affect mood – are diminished .” (Dossey, 1991; Nieuwenhof, 1994)
Separation of newborn babies from their mothers causes a high secretion of the stress hormone cortisol. (Bowlby 1980; Noble 1993) There is physiological evidence from studies of laboratory rats that the level of maternal care given to the infant influences its response to stress: the more care, the lower the levels of hormones like adrenaline in reaction to stressful circumstances. People who are highly reactive to stress are at greater risk for the development of depression, and drug and substance abuse problems, etc. Adopted people have a greater vulnerability to stress, and are also at greater risk for depression and drug and substance related abuse problems.
The few months after birth together form what Kitzinger (1978) calls a fourth trimester of pregnancy. These months are part of a continuum, in which the infant remains psychologically merged with the mother. Interruption of this continuum, by taking the baby away from the mother at birth, has a profound effect on the child. The child loses not only its mother but also part of the self. (Verrier) Yet, when it comes to adoption, Verrier wrote in 1991, there is a kind of denial that at the moment of birth and the next few days, weeks or months in the life of a child, when he is separated from his mother and handed over to strangers, he could be profoundly affected by the experience.”
From adoptionbirthmothers
Australia adopted a widespread adopton programme of taking infants immediately from their mothers, to new adoptive parents. Over the ensuing years age related suicide data for the infants and mothers revealed a doubling of both suicide rates.
This even though the babies were taken straight from their mothers, apparently before they would 'know'.
There are common adolescent affects. ODD, ADD, RAD...suicides....
Stop treating babies like objects with some magic formula that you think you can control.
To do so risks a human life, every time.
Its extremely short-sighted and laughable really that anyone can believe psychological damage from separation can only happen if a child is old enough to be in determined 'attachment' stage.
Pretending a baby is absent of deep physiological relativity to its mother, when its evident in saving lives of neonates, and much more, is foolhardy at best. To deny this and actively remove babies from their physiological mothers is cruel.
I don't know how its contemplated, let alone defended!
Baseline.