JAMES J. WARFIELD: John Bowby was a British psychologist.
And he became extremely interested
in child-mother separation during the bombing of London.
The bombing of London, a lot of parents
sent their kids to the safety of the countryside.
And the kids were with safe people.
They were well cared for.
They were well-fed.
But they still had a very negative response
to the separation from their mothers.
At that point, he looked at the biology that
was emerging in primatology.
A monkey infant gets almost all its nutrition the first two
or three months of life from its mother from lactation.
But the infant who is weaned still seeks proximity.
You'll see the infant reach out and touch the mom's tail
or touch its coat.
There is a continuing lifelong desire
for proximity and contact.
And Bowlby and others have seen that proximity-seeking
and that contact-seeking as being cornerstones of what
they call attachment behavior.
HOWARD STEELE: In the first part of the 20th century,
behaviorists and psychoanalysts claimed
that babies love their parents because you don't want to bite
the hand that feeds you.
The innovation of Bowlby was to observe
that that can't be all, that what the child needs
is not only to be fed, but also to be held
by an understanding, sensitive, and responsive adult.
And that optimal social and mental health outcomes will
follow from that.
And 60 or more years on now, we have a half century
of evidence showing that he was more or less right.
ANNE MURPHY: Our program at the Center for Babies, Toddlers,
and Families is really based on the theories
of John Bowlby with the idea that we really
need to help parents and children form
a secure attachment.
So oftentimes, families are referred to us
when the parents have had very difficult childhoods themselves
and are really struggling in this role of being a parent.
PEARL CASTILLO: And like I said, I never had a mommy.
I was never taught how to take care of anybody or myself.
So it was like very hard, like I wouldn't have patience,
like the crying.
I would scream at her and stuff like that.
ANNE MURPHY: For many parents who really were neglected
as children, hearing a baby cry triggers in them
their own feelings of that unrelenting
crying that they did.
So for Pearl, it was very, very difficult
for her to be able to meet her child's needs.
PEARL CASTILLO: Push it.
Push this button.
Yeah, hard.
Push it.
ANNE MURPHY: We've partnered with the Center for Attachment
Research at The New School for a series of attachment measures
to test that our intervention is effective.
MIRIAM STEELE: So come on in, Pearl.
That's going to be your chair.
So just put her down, and let her have a go at whatever she
wants to do here.
We measure the attachment relationship
with a laboratory scenario that takes 20 minutes.
The critical point is where the mother
gets a cue to leave the room.
PEARL CASTILLO: Bye, baby girl.
See you later.
MIRIAM STEELE: Some children look on the outside
like they're very independent and seem not to notice
but physiologically are very aroused
and stay aroused even in the presence
of when that caregiver returns.
By contrast, the securely attached child
often notices, cries when the caregiver leaves,
and when the caregiver comes back,
easily turns to the caregiver, and looks to the caregiver
to be comforted.
And then they can get back to some kind of homeostasis.
PEARL CASTILLO: OK, you play with them.
MIRIAM STEELE: We think this response
is one of the hallmarks of mental health.
BRUCE MCEWEN: What is so interesting
about childhood development is that we
know a lot about the long-term, lifelong consequences
of early life adversity, ranging from psychological effects,
like substance abuse and depression, but also
biological consequences, like increased incidence
of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and a whole host
of other physical ailments.
One of the things we know that can lead down
the path towards cardiovascular disease
is chronic inflammation.
Inflammation is a biological response
that helps the body counteract an infection.
The body produces chemicals, which
activate the immune system and allow it to get rid
of the infective agent.
When the infection is contained, the body
calls forth cortisol to try to turn down the inflammation.
Now this is all good.
But there are situations, especially connected
with traumatic experiences, in which that cortisol response
doesn't happen.
So these people who had these adverse early life experiences
had elevated levels of inflammation,
which is at the heart of cardiovascular disease.
So cortisol is very important.
ANNE MURPHY: Yum, yum, yum.
Almost done.
Good work.
That's my boy.
The way that we measure cortisol is through a saliva sample
obtained upon arrival at the lab and at the end of the lab
visit.
And our goal is to, over time, impact patterns of cortisol.
PEARL CASTILLO: Is that OK?
HOWARD STEELE: Our initial measurements
of these families when they were beginning the intervention,
we see very low levels of attachment security
as measured by their behavior.
But when we look at families who have participated
for six months or more, we see attachment security
at 70%, the same level seen worldwide.
Because higher levels of attachment security correlate
with more normal cortisol responses,
we're hoping to see their cortisol levels
change as a result of the intervention.
PEARL CASTILLO: The main thing was it helped me
a lot to focus on my child.
Before I could tolerate the crying.
It would make me crazy, and I used to be depressed.
But now, I mean, sometimes I can't take it.
But I know better now.
BRUCE MCEWEN: What have we learned from the studies
of early life adversity?
What we've learned is to take it seriously,
that these are real biological issues.
That early attachment is vital to everything else that
happens, something that is an inevitable part of who
we are as human beings.