Throughout history, perspectives on infant capabilities have altered markedly. During the Renaissance period, John Locke referred to the newborn infant as a tabula rasa, a blank slate void of capabilities or individuality. In the early part of this century, newborns were still believed to be blind, with limited capacity to taste, smell, or feel pain. However, this century also witnessed an explosion of infant development research including neonatal behavior, temperament, sensory abilities, and parent -infant relationships.
In addition to the changing perception of newborns, obstetrical practices were altered this century. Reliance on midwives and home births gave way to hospital births utilizing medical procedures and technology. In this milieu, the emotional needs of mothers and babies were often overruled by technical protocol. As such, mothers and newborns were routinely separated for prolonged periods. Near the middle of this century, Marshall Klaus and John Kennell began to express the importance of mother -infant contact immediately after birth. Such contact, they maintained, was adaptive physiologically and was an important milestone in the development of emotional bonds necessary for secure attachment. Their perspective resulted in heightened awareness among medical professionals of the importance of mother -infant contact after birth and many hospitals adapted procedures to support such interactions. Anthropologist has stated that the emerging (or, more appropriately, the reemerging) emphasis on mother -infant contact upon delivery may be a return to a formerly universal practice driven by biological factors that are adaptive in that they support survival, growth, and emotional well-being.
In Your Amazing Newborn, by Marshal Klaus and clinical social worker Phyllis Klaus, the biological capabilities of the newborn are presented, framed in the adaptive significance of mother -infant contact after delivery. It reiterates themes presented earlier by and more recently by Klaus, Kennell, and Klauss (1995) in a book entitled Bonding: Building the Foundations of Secure Attachment and Independence. A common theme across all of these books is that neonates and parents have fundamental emotional needs such as physical contact. When these needs are denied due to parent -infant separation, a tremendous opportunity for parents and infant to become acquainted is missed. This missed opportunity may be an obstacle in the passage to attachment.
Relative to previous books by Klaus and others, the present book more deeply examines the significance of neonatal capabilities for forging relationships with caregivers and ensuring maternal and infant survival. The authors explain, for instance, that when the neonate suckles at his mother's breast, the release of oxytocin that results causes blood vessels in the uterus to close, inhibiting maternal bleeding. In a sense, as the infant suckles to sustain himself, he is responsible for his mother's survival. The adaptive significance of this encounter is therefore