The wonders of “IT”

As a social worker, there seems no escape from it. Everywhere I go, it seems to follow me. There I am already on this trip to India, on a flight from Calgary to London, and I am engaged in it. “It” is the sometimes not so subtle activity of observing people, their behaviors and wondering how they fit into various social work theories.

So, I am sitting in the second row in the cheap seats on British Airways watching three mothers and their babies in the row in front of me. In so doing, the work of attachment theorists John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth and Mary Main came to mind. Here I was, essentially in an attachment laboratory watching the mother – child dyads at work.

In the seats in front of me was a remarkably anxious mother. She was nervous about the interactions between she and her baby which was reflected in the way in which the baby would not settle down. As the little boy grew restless or noisy, mom got anxious and then so did the baby. It would take quite some time for the baby to settle.

At the far end to my left was the emotionally cold mother. Oh she was good at the basics of feeding, changing diapers and so on. She was not emotionally available however. Thus the child managed her mother by using intense, pay attention to me behavior. If the mother did not respond, the child intensified.

In between the two mothers, was a woman who was significantly in tune with her child. She could read the cues well and responded accordingly. The child settled knowing the mother was at hand. It was interesting to watch this mother, at one point, assist the anxious mother. The baby calmed in the arms of this stranger although kept his mother in sight suggesting that there was indeed some level of security in the attachment relationship.

Later, on the flight from London to Chennai, I watched a mother engage in face to face emotional mirroring with her baby. As the child would smile, so did the mother; as the child’s gaze wandered to something, the mother followed and responded. When the child was upset (as so often happens when children are cooped up in a plane for 9 hours) the child sought out mother to be soothed. The mother was highly responsive and the child calmed very quickly. Further, the child sought out eye contact with the mother who offered this vibrant communication.

As the observer, I was also fascinated with the cross cultural nature of what I was observing with these and several other examples. It very much reminded me that attachment is not about culture but about the essential relationship between a parent (in these cases all mothers) and their infants. It is such an amazing building block for the future allowing the child to predict whether or not the world will be safe and responsive. What a joy it was to see tis in action.

While I was observing, I also saw cultural responses from people around these babies. At the time, I was reading Lisa Aronson Fontes wonderful book Child Abuse and Culture. She quoted the American writer Barbara Kingsolver in what seemed a most appropriate quote about an experience in Spain’s Canary Islands:

“ Widows in black, buttoned downed CEO’s, purple sneakered teenagers, the butcher, the baker, all would stop on the street to have little chats with my daughter… Whenever Camille grew cranky in a restaurant…the waiters flirted and brought little presents, and nearby diners looked on with that sweet, wistful gleam of an eye that I though diners reserved for the desert tray. What I discovered in Spain was a culture that held children to be its meringues and éclairs. My own culture, it seemed in retrospect, tended to regard children as a sort of toxic waste product: a necessary evil, maybe, but if its not our own we don’t want to se it or hear it or, God help us, smell it.”

The flight was almost entirely Indian in at least culture, although passports suggested a wide array of residence countries. There was the nurses (husband and wife) now living in England; the retired engineer from Chennai; the family from Toronto; the older couple who resided in Chicago – but all predominantly Indian in cultural origin. There were but a small smattering of other races. So, when as the last half hour of the flight occurred, the plane began a slow descent which is so hard on infants, the cacophony of cries that emerged almost in unison, was impossible to ignore. But unlike the same experience in North America, here was a chatting about the noise and the challenges for the babies and – most importantly – an understanding that just made the experience quite normal.

I believe it was Mark Twain who spoke about the value of travel. I should look that up but, as I write this in rural India shortly after arrival, there is no power, much less any internet. But this journey has awakened my sense of how powerful parenting can be. I am reminded why we teach about attachment and the wonderous journey it can create for a child.