History helps us understand herstory

The older you get, the more you love history! Consider the book, Love at Goon Park for example. It’s a book about the life of Harry Harlow, the eccentric American psychologist whose ground-breaking work on what the author, Deborah Blum, deftly terms “the science of affection”.

Harlow demonstrated scientifically that affection and attachment actually matter to us all. It is remarkable, indeed astonishing, to think there was once a time where it was necessary to prove that we care whether our mothers love us.

In 1928, a best-selling book on raising children warned parents, especially mothers: don’t pick them up with they cry; don’t hold them for pleasure. Pat them on the head when they do well; shake their hands; okay, kiss them on the foreheads but only on big occasions. Called The Psychological Care of the Child and Infant, it was by psychologist John B Watson. It was followed by the even more popular The Wife’s Handbook in which author Arthur Albutt warned that the sentimental natures of mothers are a defect. And then by The Care and Feeding of Children, which achieved 15 editions by recommending against the “vicious practice” of rocking a child to sleep. Thanks a lot, Luther Holt!

This was accepted wisdom until at least the 1930s and longer. It was the late 1950s before the mothers were scientifically accepted as being more than feeding machines. Even then, the revolutionary book The Competent Infant really documented the baby’s side of the loving relationship with mothers and not the active and complex role that mothers played in both attachment and pushing their child out into the world.

Then, in a weird twist, Harlow’s work was pilloried by the women’s liberation movement in early 1970s. Women suddenly saw Harlow’s effort to validate the need for love and affection as a narrow-minded bid to chain mothers to the home, especially in the early years of their children’s life. The eccentric scientist’s sarcasm didn’t help him make any sort of transition to feminist ideology; he just riled them further, quite intentionally.

The links here for women in the workplace are many. For one thing, both Harlow’s wives were brilliant science graduates in their own right who were forced to step down from their positions when they married. For another, several women added astonishingly to Harlow’s experiments to deepen and broaden the exploration of the role of love and affection – brilliance was not the domain of men in Harlow’s laboratory.

But the revelation for me was the way that this biography put his work in context. It is so easy to forget how much society has changed (especially when we are all hoping for more). As we scratch our heads over why we do not have enough women on boards, history helps to explain just how recent our efforts are when it comes to rethinking the role of women in the workforce and as mothers. And, of course, the role of men at work and at home.

Do you agree? Write and tell me your views.

BRW

Comments (0)