September 9, 1969

Monkey Love May Be Happiness Key

Out of the welter of projects launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson to carry out his War on Poverty, one stands out as both useful and compassionate. Known as "foster grandparents" the $41 million program goes to the root of all human problems — the lack of love.

Under foster grandparents, 17,600 elderly poor people will be paid to provide company and friendship to neglected children. Pilot projects have been announced for St. Vincent DePaul Children's Village in Cleveland, and the Children's Home of the Akron Welfare Board.

Within a few months, other foster grandparents in urban slums and poor rural areas will comfort children from broken homes. A third group will work with mentally retarded children. Johnson said his new program would give an economic boost to impoverished old folks "who are eager to help themselves and others and have maturity and experience to offer."

At last we are going to tap a rich vein of skill and knowledge in a hitherto wasted resource. Being a good and loving parent is something nearly every adult learns how to do well. Yet, it is a surprisingly scarce commodity within certain segments of our society.

I have always thought it foolish to put our old folks out to pasture at age 65. It is an affectation of youngsters that only they have the energy and knowledge to cope with life's complexities.

This program, which so neatly "kills two birds with one stone," brings to mind a study about the effect of love on emotional development which was roundly denounced by many Congressmen a few years back.

Because it is impossible, obviously, to experiment with human babies, scientists at the University of Wisconsin use infant monkeys to test various factors of emotional development. The government granted Harry F. and Margaret Kuenne Harlow funds to carry out their work in their unique Primate Laboratory.

Under the title of "Love in Infant Monkeys," the investigation was derided out of hand by Treasury watchdogs. It must be acknowledged that the benefits of such a study are not readily apparent to the average taxpayer. However, the preliminary findings point the way to the first understanding of what makes us tick.

The science of human motivation is the least developed of all the disciplines. None other can be so important to the achievement of peace and progress. The burden to society of the social deviate, the criminal and the trouble maker is incalculable — yet we all start out as newborn infants with the same emotional equipment. What makes happy useful citizens out of most of us, but miserable misfits of others? Some surprising and significant answers have come from the Harlows' monkeys.

In an attempt to raise hardy disease-free monkeys for other experiments, the Harlows took infant monkeys from their mothers and companions to be raised in sterile confinement. Without exception, all the monkeys developed into hostile, aggressive animals or into withdrawn, fearful creatures. All were unable to carry out normal social or sexual contacts with other monkeys.

Sensing they had stumbled onto a key factor in similar development among humans, the Harlows undertook an investigation of all the factors affecting social character.

They raised infant monkeys with natural mothers, wire dummies with milk nipples, "surrogate" cloth-covered dummies, and no mothers at all. They also raised their little charges without mothers but with other infants.

It was no revelation that the mother-raised infants developed into well rounded individuals. It was startling to learn, however, that the mother was not essential to normal emotional development. Monkeys raised in close association with other infant monkeys developed quite as well as if with a mother.

The conclusion is definite: it is close social contact that provides the stimulus for normal life. It is social deprivation that creates misfits.

This is not quite the whole story, however.  Social contact — whether with the mother or other infants — absolutely must take place abundantly during the early months of infancy. The emotional patterns, apparently, are the first to be established in the brain — well before seeing, hearing and muscle control.

A monkey infant given much love and handling during the first three to six months (corresponding to one to two years in humans) will develop into a normal animal even though it is thereafter socially deprived. Conversely, an animal denied social contact during this critical period will deviate from the normal even though returned to its mother and society after six months.

Love at an early stage is critical to primate development.  Observations of human infants indicates the same factors are vital to them.

As with humans, the problems of one monkey generation are carried forward into the next. Mother monkeys who are themselves "motherless" are unable to adequately care for their youngsters. They either shun them entirely or abuse them. Even though raised in the same cage with their mother and near by to other normal monkey families, the youngsters of motherless mothers develop abnormally.

The extremes of sexuality and aggressiveness observed in their behavior evoke all too vivid parallels in behavior of disturbed human children and adolescents in psychiatric clinics and institutions for delinquents.

We may be trembling on the threshold of a breakthrough in human development. Certainly we have not yet learned to live compatibly with each other.

President Johnson is on the right track in providing companionship for socially deprived children. They are a precious asset. It is to be fervently hoped we will rear happy children as successfully as in reaching the moon.

Author: Lindsey Williams