In Harry Harlows Experiment With Infant Monkeys, What Was He Trying to Study?

In the 1950's, psychologist Harry Harlow began a series of experiments on babe 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 on in life.

As an unwitting participant in the human form of Harlow'due south monkey experiment, known equally trans-racial or trans-cultural adoption, I am constantly seeking to expand my knowledge and agreement of the life-long ramifications of these types of social experiments.

Co-ordinate to the State Department, in 2005, over 21,500 children immigrated to the U.s. for the purpose of adoption, the bulk 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 equally a manner 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 piece of work education, I wanted to connect-the-gaps in what I saw as an adoptive parent and adoption professional dominant discourse effectually adoption.

Part 2: Why I named the blog Harlow'south Monkey

Sometimes readers comment that they don't like that I named my blog "Harlow's Monkey." My blog proper noun has always sparked controversy. Adoptive parents will say or write on their blogs " I'thousand non a wire monkey!!" (referring to the "substitute wire or cloth monkey). Others who don't know who Harlow was, or what the monkey experiments were, oftentimes make statements nigh how my bailiwick/name is "depressing" upon learning about the monkey experiments.

Since this is hot-button detail, I idea it was time to talk over the subject of Harlow and his monkey experiments in a little more depth, and the reason why I chose this name for my blog. Go along in mind that I am not an expert on Harlow or his scientific discipline; I just establish that there are a lot of parallels betwixt Harlow'southward experiments and adoption and Harlow was attempting to learn about the nature of zipper and what happens when baby monkeys are removed from their mothers.

I am far from being artistic 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 infant monkeys in his experiments to homo 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 (concrete needs) over terry-cloth covered wire "mothers" without food (comfort). Harlow's results plant that these infant monkeys would cling to and answer to the soft, material covered monkeys over the plain wire "mothers" with nutrient, thus  showing that nurturing and the demand for affection were
greater than the demand 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 2 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 equally orphanages or grouping homes; it just isn't possible to mimic or provide enough ane on one attending and comforting to an infant or a child in these types of living situations. Even though they may exist cared for, and even loved, by the caregivers in these
institutions, there is just not enough to get around. So, most people would make the statement that a living state of affairs that is more than "dwelling house-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 intendance system of providing for abandoned or relinquished children instead of orphanages, like the ones I lived in in the early on 1970s.

Still,
it isn't just in adoption that we sometimes see this played out negatively. There are stories in the news all the time nigh 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 sub-development is due to lack of zipper 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 detachment. 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 philosophy of non overindulging babies and children and putting them on strict schedules for feeding and sleeping.The popular volume "The Care and Feeding of Children"
published betwixt 1894 and 1935 advocated against "the 'cruel practise' 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 babe monkeys into two groups; one with the terry cloth mother, i with the wire mother. Both groups of monkeys ate the same amount merely 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 material-covered "mothers" were able to calm themselves better when frightened with stimuli; they likewise hadquicker resolutions after beingness frightened to base-level behavior. The wire-covered monkey babies, however, had bully difficulty when frightened. They did not become to their mother; instead, they would screech, stone back and forth or throw themselves on the floor.

Harlow'due south experiments showed us that attachment and bonding is more of import to the baby monkey than just providing for physical needs. That is, nosotros want to develop in our children the next few steps on the Maslow's bureaucracy 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 (Dearest in Infant Monkeys, Scientific American 200, June 1959):

Thus all the objective tests nosotros have been able to devise concord 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 kid appears to be essentially thesame, whether the mother is real or a cloth  surrogate. . . .

The depth and persistence of attachment to the mother depend not just on the kind of stimuli that the immature animal receives but also on when it receives them. . . . Clinical experience with human beings indicates that people who take been deprived of affection in infancy may have difficulty forming affectional ties in later life. From
preliminary experiments with our monkeys we accept also found that their affectional responses develop, or neglect to develop, co-ordinate to a like pattern.

In naming my blog Harlow's Monkey, I was non 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 united states who were adopted, nosotros are existence raised by "substitute" parents. Just every bit we children are ofttimes substitute children for our parents, especially those of us who were adopted as a outcome of our parents' infertility.

But as Harlow's experiments clearly prove, information technology is the quality of the comfort and the ability to meet our emotional needs that is important and non merely the ability to feed, clothe and shelter us. Which is an important consideration when thinking almost things such as dwelling house studies. Home studies and foster intendance licenses were once based more on the power of the parents to provide the shelter and condom requirements for a child. We now know that it takes much more; the ability of the parent to provide emotional comfort and intendance.

This is especially of import to me because when nosotros think about transracial adoption and international adoption, we social workers wait at the home study and meet that yes, this parent or these parents can meet the physical and prophylactic needs of a kid; 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 lonely like Harlow's rhesus monkeys and their wire-simply mothers.

Do I recall that I am function of a big, social experiment? You lot bet. Merely like Harlow'southward 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 encounter whether it "works" – that is, are nosotros psychologically all right after being removed from our families and communities of color into mostly white, middle- to upper-grade families? How are we transracial and international adoptees faring, considering that the electric current federal legislation in the United States prohibits considering the cultural and racial needs of a kid?

Harry Harlow didn't walk into his lab, carry his experiments on ane baby monkey, so call it a 24-hour interval. He repeated his experiments, similar good scientists do, in gild to achieve some amount of reliability and validity in his results.

On a micro level, I am merely 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 existence placed in a substitute home. Over 200,000 of us from Korea alone.

When people focus on private cases, 1 (or two) parent(due south) and 1 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 deportation and traumas. I am not "dissing" my parents, because they did what they were advised to do by their social workers and adoption bureau. They raised me as as if I was a white kid built-in to them, but like my siblings.

It is the larger, societal issues, such equally the philosophy of the times that advised social workers 20 years ago to raise their children like "white, biological children" that trouble me. Harlow'southward 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, bank check out  The Adoption History Project – Harry Harlow

For more than on Harry Harlow and his monkey experiments, see: The Nature of Love and Wikipedia'southward entry on Harry Harlow.

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Source: https://harlows-monkey.com/home/why-harlows-monkey/