In this beautiful photo that we have taken from the Facebook page of the Lazy Sanctuary in Costa Rica, we see an adorable lazy baby who clings to a teddy bear after losing his mother. Asha, which is how he was baptized, was found on the beaches of Puerto Viejo by a couple of vacationers. He had fallen from a tree and there was no trace of his mother. After waiting several hours for it to appear, they decided to take it to the sanctuary.
The baby was orphaned, and in the absence of his mother, he hugs a furry, nice and warm substitute mother ... as close to mom as possible. And why am I telling you this? Because seeing the image right away I remembered the soft mother theory, which is exactly what this lazy baby does. A theory that is important to understand the needs of mammalian babies, including humans, and which I will talk about next.
What is the soft mother theory?
Seven years ago I researched this theory and told you about it in the blog. But let's do some memory.
It is a very interesting and very revealing theory about the importance of attachment during the first years of life. It has been developed in the 1960s by American psychologist Harry Harlow, famous for his studies related to breeding and emotional deprivation carried out with macaques.
One of his best known works is the one that confirms the call "Soft mother theory" or surrogate mother, an investigation based on the behavior of rhesus monkey pups.
The investigation consisted of separating the young from their biological mother and replacing them with two artificial mothers: one made with a metal net provided with a bottle and the other made of plush and without food.
Which of the two mothers do you think preferred the offspring? Only when they felt hungry were they going to satisfy their need with the food provided by the metal monkey, but all the rest of the time they remained close to the heat and the soft texture provided by the plush mom. It even served as protection, as they approached her to shelter when something scared them. They did not approach the mother who provided them with food, but the one who provided them with security.
When the young were moved to a new habitat they clung to the plush mother until they felt safe to go exploring on their own, always returning to the "soft" mother to seek reparation. Instead, when the young were moved to a new habitat without their mother, they acted very differently: they started screaming, crying, sucking their fingers and looking for their "soft object" everywhere.
When they met again with their mother they clung to her without daring to leave her, which reveals that the need for protection is above the need to explore.
What does this study tell us? For starters, the need for contact is instinctive and basic in babies. Then, that the need for affection, protection and security provided by a mother is superior to the need for food. Food is important and necessary, but it is nothing more than affection. It reveals above all the essential importance of maternal attachment during the first years of life to raise self-assured, healthy and independent children.
