Maternal bond

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A mother holds up her child.
Mother sea lion and pup.
A mother Yellow-bellied Marmot kissing her pup.

A maternal bond or motherly bond is generally the relationship between a mother and her child.

While a maternal bond is typically associated with pregnancy and childbirth, a maternal bond may also occur in cases where the child is unrelated, such as adoption.

There are thousands of potential factors, both physical and emotional, that can influence the mother-child bonding process. Separation anxiety disorder is a condition in which a child becomes fearful and nervous when away from home or separated from a loved one, usually a parent or other caregiver. New mothers do not always experience instant love toward their child. Instead, the love and bond between the mother and her child typically strengthens over time. Maternal bonding can take hours, days, weeks, or even months to develop.[1]

Pregnancy

The maternal bond between a human female and her biological child usually begins to develop during pregnancy. The pregnant female adapts her lifestyle to suit the needs of the developing infant. At around 18 to 25 weeks into pregnancy, the mother begins to feel the fetus moving. Similar to seeing her child for the first time in an ultrasound scan, this experience usually leads the mother to feel more attached to her child.

Some believe that the developing fetus can hear the mother's heartbeat and voice and has the ability to respond to touch or movement. By the seventh month of pregnancy, two-thirds of women report a strong maternal bond with their unborn child.[2]

Mothers who did not want the pregnancy typically do not have a close relationship with the child.[3] They are also more likely to suffer from post-partum depression or other mental health problems and less likely to breast-feed the infant.[3]

Childbirth

The process of childbirth is an experience that can contribute immensely to the mother and child bond. As every birth is unique, this may not always be the case. Factors such as experiencing a traumatic birth, the mother's childhood, medical stress, lack of support, and the influence of a spouse or partner can worsen rather than strengthen the bond.

The emotional bonding theory first appeared in the mid-1970s, and by the 1980s, bonding had become an accepted maternity term. Soon, the process became analyzed and scrutinized to the point of creating another term – poor bonding.[citation needed][4]

Breastfeeding

Production of oxytocin during childbirth and lactation increases parasympathetic activity. Thus, anxiety is theoretically reduced. Generally, it is understood that maternal oxytocin circulation can predispose women to form bonds and show bonding behavior.[citation needed]

Breastfeeding is also strongly believed to foster the early post-partum maternal bond, via touch, response, and mutual gazing.[5]

Moral side effects of oxytocin

A carefully controlled study, exploring the biological roots of immoral behavior, demonstrated that oxytocin promotes dishonesty when the outcome favors the closely bonded groups to which an individual belongs. A real world example of this effect can be seen when parents lie about their address to gain admission to better schools for their children. According to the lead author, the study shows that oxytocin leads people to bend the rules for people they care about.[6]

Early Years' maternal separation anxiety

As children develop, beginning at 9–10 months of age when they begin to crawl and then when they begin to walk around 12 months of age, they begin to develop capacities to move away from their mother and physically explore the world.[7] These newly developed capacities bring with them separation anxiety as the infant is more vulnerable the further away he or she is from mother. Additionally, this newly acquired motor development parallels infants' intellectual curiosity, cognitive and language development as they begin to point and name, and jointly attend with mothers to their environment beginning by 9–10 months. Most parents welcome these explorations and this increased independence. However, in certain instances such as maternal depression, traumatization or history of disturbed bonding in her own early life, some mothers have significant difficulty in tolerating the exploration and-or the infant's anxiety.[8] This anxiety occurs when infants and toddlers feel threatened or socially reference their mothers for reassurance. Recent research has pointed out that mothers, for example, with histories of violence-exposure and post-traumatic stress show less activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area that helps to temper and contextualize fear responses, and thus are likely unable to extinguish effectively their own fear response upon watching a videotaped mother-toddler separation scene in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner.[9] Inevitably, children who have rarely been separated from their mother will become anxious when separated for extended periods. This is most commonly experienced when the child starts to attend kindergarten or primary school. This is normal, and every child suffers to some extent as enter the strange, new, environment of pre-school and have to say goodbye to their mother. Later in life, this anxiety can reoccur if mothers have to leave their family unit to work. In both of these examples, the child's anxiety (and that of the parents) can be reduced by priming, i.e. preparing the child for the experience prior to its occurrence and by creating and maintaining dialogue and connection between the absent parent and child during the separation. Two colour picture books have been written for children aged 3–7 that have received global recognition as useful in positive priming for parental separation. My Daddy's Going Away and Mummy's Home! (by Christopher MacGregor and Emma Yarlett) tell the story of preparation, separation and return using little green aliens and rhythmic verse. Both books are based on the Emotional Cycle of Deployment and MacGregor's website explains how the books can act as comforting bedtime or classroom stories and as catalysts for discussion at every level.

See also

Footnotes

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  7. Schaffer HR (2004). Introducing Child Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-21627-8.
  8. Pelaez M, Virues-Ortega J, Field TM, Amir-Kisei Y, Schnerch G (2013). Social referencing in infants of mothers with symptoms of depression. Infant Behav Dev, 36(4): 548-56. doi : 0.1016/j.infbeh.2013.05.003. Epub 2013 Jun 14.
  9. Schechter DS, Moser DA, Paoloni-Giacobino A, Stenz A, Gex-Fabry M, Aue T, Adouan W, Cordero MI, Suardi F, Manini A, Sancho Rossignol A, Merminod G, Ansermet F, Dayer AG, Rusconi Serpa S (epub May 29, 2015). Methylation of NR3C1 is related to maternal PTSD, parenting stress and maternal medial prefrontal cortical activity in response to child separation among mothers with histories of violence exposure. Frontiers in Psychology. To view the online publication, please click here: http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/Abstract.aspx?s=944&name=psychology_for_clinical_settings&ART_DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00690&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Frontiers_in_Psychology&id=139466