Why Love Matters: How affection shapes a baby’s brain

278 Pages·2014·1.86 MB·English

by  Sue Gerhardt

Why Love Matters

Why Love Matters explains why loving relationships are essential to brain
development in the early years, and how these early interactions can have lasting
consequences for future emotional and physical health. This second edition
follows on from the success of the first, updating the scientific research,
covering recent findings in genetics and the mind/body connection, and
including a new chapter highlighting our growing understanding of the part also
played by pregnancy in shaping a baby’s future emotional and physical well-
being.
Sue Gerhardt focuses in particular on the wide-ranging effects of early stress
on a baby’s or toddler’s developing nervous system. When things go wrong with
relationships in early life, the dependent child has to adapt; what we now know
is that his or her brain adapts too. The brain’s emotion and immune systems are
particularly affected by early stress and can become less effective. This makes
the child more vulnerable to a range of later difficulties such as depression, anti-
social behaviour, addictions or anorexia, as well as physical illness.
Why Love Matters is an accessible, lively account of the latest findings in
neuroscience, developmental psychology and neurobiology – research that
matters to us all. It is an invaluable and hugely popular guide for parents and
professionals alike.
Dr Sue Gerhardt has been a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice
since 1997. She co-founded the Oxford Parent Infant Project (OXPIP), a
pioneering charity that today provides psychotherapeutic help to hundreds of
parents and babies in Oxfordshire and is now the prototype of many new ‘PIPs’
around the country. She is also the author of The Selfish Society (2010).
Why Love Matters
How affection shapes a baby’s brain
Second edition

Sue Gerhardt

Second edition published 2015
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Sue Gerhardt
The right of Sue Gerhardt to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2004
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gerhardt, Sue, 1953-author.
Why love matters : how affection shapes a baby’s brain / Sue Gerhardt. — Second edition.
p. ; cm.
WIncludes bibliographical references and index.
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Brain—growth & development. 2. Parent-Child Relations. 3. Brain Chemistry. 4. Emotions—
physiology. 5. Infant. 6. Love. 7. Mental Disorders—prevention & control. 8. Personality Development.
WL 300] RJ134
155.42´2—dc23
2014011544
ISBN: 978-0-415-87052-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-87053-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75831-2 (ebk)
Typeset in New Century Schoolbook
by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
For my children, Jessica and Laurence
Contents

Foreword by Steve Biddulph
Acknowledgements
Introduction to the second edition
PART 1
The foundations: babies and their brains
1 Before we meet them
2 Back to the beginning
3 Building a brain
4 Corrosive cortisol
Conclusion to Part 1
PART 2
Shaky foundations and their consequences
5 Trying not to feel: the links between early emotional regulation and the
immune system
6 Melancholy baby: how early experience can alter brain chemistry, leading
to adult depression
7 Active harm: the links between trauma in babyhood and trauma in adult life
8 Torment: the links between personality disorders and early experience
9 Original sin: how babies who are treated harshly may not develop empathy
for others
PART 3
Too much information, not enough solutions: where do we go from
here?
10 ‘If all else fails, hug your teddybear’: repairing the damage
11 Birth of the future
Bibliography
Index
Foreword

When our children were little, we once, when they were finally asleep in bed,
settled down to relax by watching a movie called Parenthood. In this film, Steve
Martin’s character, a harassed but caring dad, had two fantasies in rapid
succession, triggered by moments with his little boy. In the first fantasy, his now
grown-up son is giving the graduation address as the star student, and thanking
his wonderful father for all his help. He points to his dad in the audi-torium, and
the audience applauds! Then, the dad is jerked back to reality, his little boy is
misbehaving. And suddenly he finds himself imagining a very different scene –
chaos on a campus as students ran from a crazed shooter in a high tower.
‘It’s the “Martin” kid!’ they are screaming. ‘His father was no good!’
We all do this, I think – hope for our kids, and fear for them. But in the last
few decades the fearing side of this has reached a kind of fever pitch. It’s as if
parents have never felt quite so lost, while at the same time so plagued by so-
called experts. It all seems to get more and more complex, and we doubt
ourselves more and more.
Part of the problem, though it’s almost never admitted, is that the experts
themselves have been confused. That happens in science sometimes, when the
old models no longer match the data, and a new way of looking is needed. A
period of confusion precedes a sudden leap to a new understanding, and
everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Luckily, we have just arrived at one of those
times. In the last ten years, helped hugely by the technology that allows us to
look inside the working human brain, neuroscience has transformed what we
know about how little children grow.
You may be thinking – well, if there’s a revolution in child development, why
haven’t I heard about it?
And the reason is this: first, it’s made up of thousands of research papers on
tiny fragments of the problem, and second, it’s really hard to understand. For
example, the very best book in the field is Allan Schore’s Affect Regulation and
the Origin of the Self. You can tell from the catchy title that this is a doorstopper
of a book. I am a professor of psychology, but I still only made it half way
through, before collapsing like Frodo on the slopes of Mount Doom. But Sue
Gerhardt is made of sterner stuff. Alongside her work as a psychotherapist and
specialist in mother and baby relationships, Sue set herself the task of reading
and absorbing pretty much the whole field of developmental neuroscience,
speaking to the researchers, synthesising it all with a view to discovering ‘How
does this help real mums and dads, as well as teachers and policy makers and so
on?’. She did this because she recognised that this knowledge would change
everything. And she was right.
In short, our problems with kids’ lives and with our own lives have arisen
because we have completely missed the importance of affection. We thought it
was just something nice that parents did. But in fact, it’s the key to all mental
health, intelligence and functioning as a human being. If someone is a great
human being, it can only mean one thing. They were loved.
Those moments of soothing, playfulness, touching and tickling, hugging and
holding that happen between mother and baby, husband and wife, old people
walking hand in hand, stimulate the brain and build connections that are the
foundations of intelligence, people skills and being a decent and wonderful
human being. All the enrichment, education, money and resources, courses and
expensive schools won’t make up for having parents who were rushed, tense and
had trouble settling with their baby or toddler and having a loving and fun time.
There are astonishing new findings in this book . . .
That stress on a pregnant mother can already begin to shape her baby’s brain –
affecting the volume of its hippocampus (a brain structure involved in memory)
or amygdala (another brain structure central to emotional reactions).
That a gene called MAOA-L makes some children twice as likely to have
trouble holding back emotional impulses. (Yet this gene is in forty per cent of
the population, so most of us have learned to get it under control).
That money worries, or long working hours during pregnancy, can affect an
enzyme in the placenta, which normally blocks cortisol from the mum going to
the baby, allowing stress hormones to flood into the baby. The result is a baby
who is born already stressed out, who may be much harder to care for.
There are clear remedies, too – for society, and for our own parenting. If in
early parenthood we can slow down, minimise stress, value kindness and time,
fun and playfulness, and if governments make this possible so that young mums