The rise of Homo Empathicus
March 1, 2010
I’m adopted and so are my brothers. When I was born I beamed a lot and within weeks was matched with a family. But one of my older brothers spent the first seven months of his life bouncing around in foster care. Five different foster families returned him because he wouldn’t stop crying.
My mother was the first to hold him like she meant it, and that’s when he relaxed and discovered smiling. He was home. My dad told me that.
At the time, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care was every parent’s Bible. Still, I sometimes wonder if Spock’s message was lost on the other families my brother didn’t click with. He encouraged parents to trust their instincts, show empathy and pick up their kids when they were upset. Mum read his book, but only because his research confirmed her take on life.
My dad, in case you’re wondering, didn’t read Spock (this was back when men still wore fedoras and trench coats and women donned aprons without an ironic grin, meaning: their two worlds never crossed). Had he read it, I don’t think he would have thrown a steaming diaper out the nursery window. “I didn’t know where I was supposed to put it,” he admitted years later. It landed with a thud on the front lawn and my mother retrieved it when she returned home from the supermarket.
But back to my brother’s crying marathon. This was 1964 and there were still a lot of mothers, especially those influenced by know-it-all grandmothers, who adhered to the old school wisdom on child rearing that said too much affection would turn babies into needy, clingy adults. Let’em cry until there are no more tears, they’d say before returning to their euchre hand or Ed Sullivan. I think that happened to my brother, until he found the right family.
This hands-off approach was established in the foundling hospitals that warehoused orphaned and abandoned infants at the turn of the last century. Here fighting germs was more important than nurturing, explains Jeremy Rifkin in The Empathic Civilization. Being a detached and clinical caregiver was a holdover from the 18th century view of human nature: the one that said from the moment we’re born we’re rational and autonomous beings and should be cared for in such a way to ensure we continue to be independent and self-sufficient. My brother balked at this approach to human nature.
Today when we pick up a baby, we’re elated when we can get them to smile at us. Did you see that? we cheer, like we’ve just spotted a shooting star. As a culture, we understand the power of eye contact and touching, so when we reach out to a child it’s as much for us as it is them. But this approach is recent, and it’s largely due to the influence of science.
After centuries of living our lives under the assumption that we’re all sinners, and if not sinners then detached automatons, and if not automatons then self-serving hoarders and pleasure seekers, scientists are now finding that an empathic disposition is embedded in our biology (as it is with several other species of the mammalian kingdom, including monkeys). Biologists talk of “mirror neurons” lighting up in the premotor cortex of the brains of humans and monkeys when we feel empathy for another. This would explain why when one baby cries others in the adjacent cribs chime in, or why when an Olympic skater weeps because she’s thinking of her dead mother, tears spill down our faces too. Our tendency to match behavior is “involuntary” and “automatic,” say the experts, a “primary adaptive function.” (keeners, you can follow up on this in Rifkin, p. 112; he has amazing end notes citing all the recent studies).
But this response wasn’t described as a biological phenomenon until the 1980s, and surely we’ve been crying and caring for oneanother since the dawn of time. Rifkin figures empathy got pushed aside by historians and philosophers with a more bleak view of human nature. For a long time history only focused its lens on the pathology of power, he says. “More often than not [it] was made by the disgruntled and discontented, the angry and rebellious — those interested in exercising authority and exploiting others.” Now, with the encouragement of science we’re shifting our approach and finding kindred spirits among our fellow creatures. “Suddenly, our sense of existential aloneness in the universe is not so extreme.”
Rifkin thinks the deterioration of the environment may be forcing us to change the way we relate to one another (a future blog post, for sure). What researchers are learning about the way we evolve changes our most basic thinking about what it means to be a human being, he says.
It makes you wonder, as Rifkin does, if we really need to be “sending out radio communications to the far reaches of the cosmos in the hopes of finding some form of intelligent and caring life when what we [we’re] desperately seeking already exists and lives among us here on Earth”?
My maternal grandmother fit into that school of thinking that felt that too much affection and physical contact was not the best way to raise a child. My mom recalls that Grandma thought that she fussed over me too much as a baby and that I should have been left to self-soothe. Fortunately for me (and for the ears of everyone around me!), Mom couldn't stand to leave me crying and held me, rocked me, hugged me. We all need human contact, whether it is a friendly pat on the back or a supportive hug. In contrast to the prevailing thought of the old school, my mom's hugs have always been a source of strength for me, even more so now that I'm grown.
Emily, can I have a hug? (I'll give you my address offline). :-)
Great Article Alison. My husbands family live in Wales, and are very old school. When our daughters were born, I was constantly hearing "you haven't picked up that baby again, have you?", over the phone or when visiting. It seemed to me that if I still hadn't entirely mastered self-soothing by my 20's and 30's, that it was rather a lot to ask of someone so small, so I pretty much held them whenever I could. Needless to say, I've never regretted it, and they are now very secure and affectionate girls of 13 and 7. Thanks for the science behind my instinct!
And thank YOU, Shelagh. It's great to hear your thoughts. ~ A
wonderful article. i love your writing style. I have a vivid image of a steaming diaper flying through a window and a lovely mother holding a baby tightly with love and kindness.
Hi Alison,
so happy to read this from you! You knew me when I only had one, but have since had another. My second was definitely a baby needing to be held 24/7. She would cry unless i held her. So i wore her all the time. Slept with her (still do at 3 yrs) and avoided having to do anything where i could not hold her. Human touch is a need. How can we expect a newborn, having been “held” in the womb since its conception, to be ok alone in a crib? Mine was an extreme case, but i accept that this is how she is and this is what she needs. I did the same with the older one and she is now a confident, strong, independent, sympathetic adult. It (infancy, childhood) lasts for such a short time, better to give them the start they need. Thank you for writing this!