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Cortisol and Bad Behaviour


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The Sue Gerhardt article in the Guardian has created a great deal of controversy. Here is a selection of letters on the issue:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,...1269619,00.html

Has Sue Gerhardt been inside a nursery (Cradle of civilisation, July 24)? She assumes what children receive there is hostility or resentment. Has she met many parents? She assumes they are all automatically loving and responsive. Instead of leaping on to the maternal guilt gravy train, she should be informing beleaguered mothers exactly how she comes to her questionable conclusions.

Are our prisons full of former nursery "victims"? How do you retrospectively measure the amount of eye contact an "anti-social" child received in their first year? And how qualified is a psychoanalytical psychotherapist to speak on this subject? Psychoanalysis is, after all, based on assumptions made in accordance with a body of beliefs that cannot be scientifically proven.

Readers could be forgiven for assuming she is just another one of those middle-class women who mistake their own parenting preferences for moral absolutes.

Dr Nuala Killeen

Warrington, Cheshire

Well said, Sue Gerhardt. This is a timely reference to new neuroscientific research on early attachment between an infant and his/her first carer and its implications for a civilised society. Without turning the clock back and blaming mothers, let's have some really creative thinking. Labour could then really contribute to a new society.

Dr Mary Butterton

Derby

Sue Gerhardt gives an important public airing to research with which many who work with young children have long been familiar. It is possible to provide the quality of care that babies need in nurseries, but it is expensive, and is not the only answer.

Government policies to extend care and education for young children are to be applauded, but there are still some pieces missing from the jigsaw. Extended parental leave, more flexible working arrangements, better support for parents with young children and schemes to link childminders into nurseries are all necessary, as well as further funding for the expansion of children's centres.

If a child's experience during the first two years of life has such a strong impact on everything that follows, then we ignore the building of these firm foundations at our peril.

Dr Gillian Pugh

Chief executive, Coram Family

While babies undoubtedly thrive in one-to-one care, one person is not enough to provide it. Parents and minders need a break, but even in the early months of life the "social brain" also wants to see what is going on between them. That's how we learn to make sense of relationships.

Very young children need a small number of familiar caregivers - some more important than others - any of which can be one-to-one. But as the founder of attachment theory noted, it is a disaster if the principal one is a nanny who then leaves you. John Bowlby lost his at the age of four.

Dr Sebastian Kraemer

Child psychiatrist, Whittington hospital, London

Sue Gerhardt worries that her research will be interpreted as anti-feminist, which undoubtedly it will be in some quarters. However, by expressing the facts openly, she is surely doing women a favour. Babies need attention in their first few months of life, but as her research proves, that attention can equally well be provided by well-paid nursery staff or by fathers. The mystique of motherhood has been replaced with a detailed understanding of the parenting behaviours that babies need. Now we really can have a sensible debate about how we should be aiming to bring up children in our society.

Karen Hands

Clitheroe, Lancs

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