Imagine you are an infant born only moments ago and the onslaught of new sensations is overwhelming—you now feel the weight of your once weightless body. Where your eyes once saw muted shades, they now see the brightness of harsh lighting. For the past nine months, you didn’t feel the pangs of hunger but now you sense them with every fibre. The warmth, comfort, and safety you once bathed in are gone, replaced with uncertainty. All your systems, such as cardiovascular, digestive, and immune are chaotic; you now need help to regulate them. That help comes every time you’re in close contact with your parent. The familiar warmth, heartbeat, and overall essence of your caregiver can quite literally be both life-changing and life-saving.
WHAT IS KANGAROO CARE?
Since the early 1980s, when a couple of pediatricians from Colombia began placing premature infants on their mother’s chests, Kangaroo Care (as it has been aptly named) has increasingly provided evidence that this simple act can produce remarkable benefits—and thankfully, it has slowly gained global attention. Placing a newborn on mum’s chest, for at least 60–90 minutes, initiates a cascade of physiological effects that optimizes every organ system in the infant’s body and promotes breastfeeding. The mother also receives benefits such as reduced stress hormone levels and greater amounts of oxytocin. Dubbed the “love hormone,” oxytocin is vital in postpartum healing, breastfeeding, and pair bonding. The benefits of close physical contact with your infant are so dramatic that the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, among many other health organizations, recommend that all infants receive this precious contact upon birth and regularly afterward.
PARENT-CHILD SYNCHRONY
Parent-child synchrony, put simply, is a system sync-up between child and caregiver that links their neurological systems together for the benefit of both. No USB cable or WiFi connection required! During infancy, this sync-up has multiple purposes. As mediated by the neuroendocrine oxytocin system, the caregiver may guide the child’s feeding patterns and sleep cycles, assist in balancing stimulation, and be more perceptive to long-lasting mood states. Beyond the initial few months, this synchrony will be crucial for the child’s psychological development, as they slowly learn to coordinate their behaviour alongside the adults around them.
LONG-TERM BENEFITS OF SKIN-TO-SKIN
What can be seen as the most significant recent finding, however, is that close physical contact has long-lasting benefits. In April 2021, Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) published a study examining the long-term effects of Kangaroo Care. For two decades, they followed preterm and full-term babies; some had received Kangaroo Care (or skin-to-skin contact), and others didn’t. The children were assessed at four months, three years, 12 years, and 20 years. The study showed that routine Kangaroo Care predicted the child’s later sensitivity to emotion-specific empathy. One method of assessing the intensity of empathy was via brain mapping, which displayed the regions of the brain that were activated when the children were asked to “put themselves in the shoes” of a scenario’s protagonist. Researchers concluded that early experience of frequent close physical contact plays an important role in children’s social-emotional development. It’s been shown to predict the child’s later ability to interact with peers, regulate emotions, manage stress, and show empathic understanding. According to the authors, bodily contact may provide a bridge from prenatal life, when the mother’s body is focused on the growing needs of the unborn baby, to postnatal social life. Evidence shows it provides the child with long-term advantages.
These outcomes, and others, had researchers very intrigued. Using a method called hyper-scanning with advanced imaging techniques, scientists sought to identify what exactly was being exchanged between mother and child that yielded such dramatic outcomes. What they found was that the pair’s neural activity coordinated or synchronized with one another, which led to benefits for the child’s nervous system, immune system, body function, and behavioural development. What’s more, the results revealed that this synchrony was also present when the parent and child were near one another, not just when practicing Kangaroo Care. Certain factors strengthened synchrony, such as physical proximity and affectionate touch. What makes affectionate touch so important is that it activates dopamine and other feel-good chemicals in the child’s brain, enhancing cognitive functioning such as social learning and reward processing (vital in preventing major mood disorders and addictions). Skin-to-skin contact, Kangaroo Care (both with or without clothing), baby-wearing such as carrying an infant in a carrier or sling, frequent or on-demand feedings, sleeping near one another, and infant touch/massage are all practices that promote what has been scientifically termed parent-child interaction synchrony.
IT’S IN THE SCIENCE
Research findings on parent-child interaction synchrony are consistent with another area of study. Anthropologists who study human development say that humans are born about one year “too early.” Children reach only about 60 percent of adult brain size by the time they are one year old. During that one year of postpartum development, caretakers must provide the correct “habitat”, or place designed to help the infant cope with its immaturity. According to anthropological evidence, an optimal habitat can be provided through what’s termed “carry care.” Carry care, which includes the practices above, provides opportunities for close contact that promotes parent-child interaction synchrony. Anthropologists point out that it’s primarily in Western society where parents have evolved away from “carry care” and toward “cache” or “nest care”, where the baby is often placed apart from the caregiver. Placing babies on play mats and chairs is more the norm. Having the baby sleep in their own room, separated from the caregiver, is also typical. And the children’s product industry capitalizes on these Western trends by manufacturing eye-catching items that ultimately create the illusion that separateness is a desirable goal, whether parents are aware of it or not.
But science says otherwise. Interaction synchrony seems so impactful that lack of it may have implications for the development of autism spectrum disorder and other neurobehavioral disorders. Currently, interaction synchrony is one of the most studied subjects in modern science, as it has recently been found to exist in a variety of relationships, not just between a parent and child. Yet, for all its profound implications, its relational and developmental dynamics remain a mystery to researchers. Could it be because it is evidence of merging with another, suggesting the possibility of an extended conscious mind? For science, a conclusion of that nature would be paradigm-shifting.
Until interaction synchrony unveils more of its secrets, let’s embrace our babies just a little bit longer for the health of their minds, bodies, and development.
