Part 1: What is this blog about?
In the 1950’s, psychologist Harry Harlow began a series of experiments on baby monkeys, depriving them of their biological mothers and using substitute wire and terry cloth covered “mothers”. Harlow’s goal was to study the nature of attachment and how it affects monkeys who were deprived of their mothers early in life.
As an unwitting participant in the human form of Harlow’s monkey experiment, known as trans-racial or trans-cultural adoption, I am constantly seeking to expand my knowledge and understanding of the life-long ramifications of these types of social experiments.
According to the State Department, in 2005, over 21,500 children immigrated to the United States for the purpose of adoption, the majority of these children left their native homeland, language, customs, foods and religions for a middle-class, white, American home. The majority of these children also come from a country in which they were part of the racial hegemeny, only to now be part of a racial minority.
This blog was born in March of 2006 as a way to put down my thoughts about international and transracial adoption from a point of view that is often missing – the adoptee themselves. As a social worker in the field of adoptions, and having spent a lot of time volunteering or working with adoptees, and having the benefit of a social work education, I wanted to connect-the-gaps in what I saw as an adoptive parent and adoption professional dominant discourse around adoption.
Part 2: Why I named the blog Harlow’s Monkey
Sometimes readers comment that they don’t like that I named my blog “Harlow’s Monkey.” My blog name has always sparked controversy. Adoptive parents will say or write on their blogs “I’m not a wire monkey!!” (referring to the “substitute wire or cloth monkey) and even my
brother-in-law, whom I’ve known for almost 20 years and has
witnessed my journey into adoption identity proclaimed it “harsh”
towards my parents. Others who don’t know who Harlow was, or what the
monkey experiments were, often make statements about how my
subject/name is “depressing” upon learning about the monkey experiments.
So since this is hot-button item, I thought
it was time to discuss the subject of Harlow and his monkey
experiements in a little more depth, and the reason why I chose this
name for my blog. Keep in mind that I am not an expert on Harlow or his
science; I just found that there are a lot of parallels between
Harlow’s experiments and adoption and Harlow was attempting to learn about the nature of attachment and what happens when infant monkeys are removed from their mothers.
I am far from being creative or unique in choosing to name my blog, Harlow’s Monkey.
Many others before me have made the connection to adoption. Harlow
himself compared the baby monkeys in his experiments to human children
and aimed to study how maternal deprivation and love and attachment influenced human beings.
Harlow’s famous monkey experiment hinged on the question of whether
infant monkeys removed from their mothers would respond to substitute
wire monkey “mothers” that provided food (physical needs) over
terry-cloth covered wire “mothers” without food (comfort). Harlow’s
results found that these infant monkeys would cling to and respond to
the soft, fabric covered monkeys over the plain wire “mothers” with
food, thus showing that nurturing and the need for affection were
greater than the need for food.
This
is an important concept in terms of adoption, because often the
philosophy around adoption was centered around “feed ’em, clothe ’em
and put a roof over their heads” – in other words, the first two levels
of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; what I call shelter (food, clothing and shelter) and safety.
This is why most people have a strong and negative reaction to
institutions such as orphanages or group homes; it just isn’t possible
to mimic or provide enough one on one attention and comforting to an
infant or a child in these types of living situations. Even though they
may be cared for, and even loved, by the caregivers in these
institutions, there is just not enough to go around. So, most people
would make the argument that a living situation that is more
“home-like” or “family-centered” is better for attachment for children.
Hence the reason some countries, such as Korea, have since tried to
move to a foster care system of providing for abandoned or relinquished
children instead of orphanages, like the ones I lived in in the early
1970s.
However,
it isn’t just in adoption that we sometimes see this played out
negatively. There are stories in the news all the time about infants
and children who are fed, clothed and sheltered but remain underweight
and underdeveloped. These kids are called “failure to thrive” and the
reason for their subdevelopment is due to lack of attachment by
caregivers. Additionally, the era of the Harlow monkey experiments came
at a time when the social philosophy of child rearing was that of
distance and emotional detatchment. The 1930s through the 1950s was the
time of Dr. Spock, of doctors advising mothers to use formula and
bottles versus breastfeeding and there was a strong philsophy of not
overindulging babies and children and putting them on strict schedules
for feeding and sleeping.The popular book “The Care and Feeding of Children”
published between 1894 and 1935 advocated against “the ‘vicious
practice’ of rocking a child in a cradle or picking her up when she
cried” (Holt, 1841-1935).
Harlow studied this concept in a second phase of his experiment. He
separated the baby monkeys into two groups; one with the terry cloth
mother, one with the wire mother. Both groups of monkeys ate the same
amount but the behaviors of the wire monkey babies were markedly
different than the cloth monkey babies. Especially important to note is
that those monkeys who had the cloth-covered “mothers” were able to
calm themselves better when frightened with stimuli; they also had
quicker resolutions after being frightened to base-level behavior. The
wire-covered monkey babies, however, had great difficulty when
frightened. They did not go to their mother; instead, they would
screech, rock back and forth or throw themselves on the floor.
Harlow’s experiments showed us that attachment and bonding is more
important to the infant monkey than just providing for physical needs.
That is, we want to develop in our children the next few steps on the
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; what I’ve called socialization (family, friends, community – in other words, a sense of belonging); self esteem and self-actualization.
According to Harlow’s own words (Love in Infant Monkeys, Scientific American 200, June 1959):
Thus
all the objective tests we have been able to devise agree in showing
that the infant monkey’s relationship to its surrogate mother is a full
one. Comparison with the behavior of infant monkeys raised by their
real mothers confirms this view. Like our experimental monkeys,
these infants spend many hours a day clinging to their mothers, and run
to them for comfort or reassurance when they are frightened. The deep
and abiding bond between mother and child appears to be essentially the
same, whether the mother is real or a cloth surrogate. . . .The depth and persistence of attachment to the mother depend not
only on the kind of stimuli that the young animal receives but also on
when it receives them. . . . Clinical experience with human beings
indicates that people who have been deprived of affection in infancy
may have difficulty forming affectional ties in later life. From
preliminary experiments with our monkeys we have also found that their
affectional responses develop, or fail to develop, according to a
similar pattern.
In naming my blog Harlow’s Monkey, I was not aiming to “diss” my parents. Harlow’s Monkey
was named to illustrate the broader issues that I see in adoption.
Whether it’s “harsh” or not, the truth is that for those of us who were
adopted, we are being raised by “substitute” parents. Just as we
children are often substitute children for our parents, especially
those of us who were adopted as a result of our parents’ infertility.
But as Harlow’s experiments clearly show, it is the quality of the comfort and the ability
to meet our emotional needs that is important and not just the ability
to feed, clothe and shelter us. Which is an important consideration
when thinking about things such as home studies. Home studies and foster
care licenses were once based more on the ability of the parents to
provide the shelter and safety requirements for a child. We now know
that it takes much more; the ability of the parent to provide emotional
comfort and care.
This is especially important to me because when we think about
transracial adoption and international adoption, we social workers look
at the home study and see that yes, this parent or these parents can
meet the physical and safety needs of a child; and they seem warm and
caring too. But without an ability to provide for our emotional and psychological comfort around our racial and cultural needs, we are left alone like Harlow’s rhesus monkeys and their wire-only mothers.
Do I think that I am part of a large, social experiment? You bet.
Just like Harlow’s rhesus monkeys, we transracially and internationally
adopted persons have been poked and prodded and been the focus of many
evaluations and studies in order to see whether it “works” – that is,
are we psychologically all right after being removed from our families
and communities of color into mostly white, middle- to upper-class
families? How are we transracial and international adoptees faring,
considering that the current federal legislation in the United States prohibits considering the cultural and racial needs of a child?
Harry Harlow didn’t walk into his lab, conduct his experiments on
one baby monkey, then call it a day. He repeated his experiments, like
good scientists do, in order to achieve some amount of reliability and
validity in his results.
On a micro level, I am just my parents’ daughter, sister to my siblings, auntie to my nieces and nephew, grandchild and cousin.
But I am also part of a macro system of children who were born under
circumstances that led to my being placed in a substitute home. Over
200,000 of us from Korea alone.
When people focus on individual cases, one (or two) parent(s) and
one child, it’s easy to forget the larger societal patterns that happen
as a result. We are talking about diasporas and migrations. We are
talking about displacement and traumas. I am not “dissing” my parents,
because they did what they were advised to do by their social workers
and adoption agency. They raised me as as if I was a white child born
to them, just like my siblings.
It is the larger, societal issues, such as the philosophy of the
times that advised social workers 20 years ago to raise their children
like “white, biological children” that trouble me. Harlow’s Monkey is
my way of lifting the micro-level veil over our eyes and examining the
macro- and global issues around the practice of adoption.
For more on Harry Harlow, check out The Adoption History Project – Harry Harlow
For more on Harry Harlow and his monkey experiments, see:
The Nature of Love
Wikipedia’s entry on Harry Harlow
Harlow's Monkey 