Separation Is Never Ending: Attachment Is a Human Right

For over 75 years, psychologists and psychiatrists have known that abrupt and/or prolonged separation can have major implications, including depression, anxiety, and behavioral disturbances. In 1952, Bowlby & Robertson argued, “There is now evidence that prolonged periods of maternal deprivation in very young children can, in some cases, give rise to extremely serious psychiatric disturbances.” In more recent years, we have learned that such separations can also impact brain development, learning, and physical health. 

During prolonged separations, children progress through three phases: protest, despair, and then detachment. These effects can be observed even when children experience prolonged separation for relatively routine reasons, and can occur when children are well-fed, housed, and looked after during the separations.

The negative impact of separation can be reduced if there is a familiar, loving, other caregiver present. It can also be reduced when the physical environment remains constant, and when, following the reunion with the caregivers, parents slowly rebuild a sense of security for their children. In contrast, when parents feel helpless or scared at the point of separation, the impact separation has on children’s development can be exacerbated.

When the government separates children from parents, the situation is already emotionally heightened. The physical environment is foreign to the child. No loving aunts, uncles, or grandparents are present to care and comfort the child while the parent is away. The reunion will not occur in an optimal environment. Parents experience desperation during the separation, and, at the time of reunion, will be in no position to comfort as they themselves will be in need of care.

Stopping separations was a must. Recognizing their significance in children’s lives, and aiding in reunification and recovery is now of critical importance.

Why is separation from parents such a source of grave distress?

Because we are hard-wired to feel this way. When social animals, including humans, are separated from their group they are more likely to be preyed upon and less likely to reproduce. Drawing upon a statistical review of 208 laboratory studies, Dickerson & Kemeny argue that almost all social stress is, at its root, related to fear of being excluded from the social group. But, along with a few other primates, humans — and especially young humans — may find separation especially stressful.

We humans do not run to a cave or a den when we are scared. When we are very young, we cry for our parents. Then we crawl to them. Then we run to them. It doesn’t matter if these are “good” parents or not — chances are, they are our best chance of surviving, especially since we have the most prolonged period of physical immaturity (and therefore helplessness) of all species. Being left alone is inherently dangerous, signaling the potential of even more danger to come. If the parent doesn’t come back, how can a young human find food? Seek shelter? Be protected? Of course, in modern times a modicum of care may be provided by the government — but thousands of years of human history course through our brains, screaming danger, danger, danger! Which means that our biology responds.

When we are scared, the least costly way of reducing our distress is through a change in behavior — going to the parent — but if we can’t do that, our body reacts. The sympathetic nervous system kicks into high gear (e.g., heart rate increases) and stress hormones pour out into our bloodstream. Over time, too much exposure to stress hormones changes the architecture of our brains, our levels of anxiety, and our ability to think and learn effectively.

Changes in stress hormones represent one pathway through which separation can have long-term ramifications. Even in rodents — burrowing animals that may not find separation as inherently terrifying — mother-pup separations can lead to lifelong neuroanatomical changes related to memory, stress regulation, alcohol use, and parenting in the next generation. In some studies effects are induced by permanent separations, but in others, days — and even hours — of maternal rodent pup separations have lifelong consequences. Recognizing the ill effects of separation, ethics boards mandate that researchers adhere to certain housing guidelines for separating primate mothers and offspring.

Should we expect fewer protections for undocumented immigrant human families than are accorded laboratory animals?

We turn now to studies conducted by researchers interested in understanding parenting behavior and the ways in which human children cope with distress. These studies often use very short, laboratory separations as a “window” into real-world life. In infancy and sometimes toddlerhood, Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure is often used to assess children’s relationship with their mothers or fathers. The Strange Situation procedure involves a series of short separations with children being left alone or with an unfamiliar caregiver for one to three minutes, and the traditional three-minute separations are shortened to one minute (or even 30 seconds) if the child seems to be experiencing excessive distress. As with other human research, use of this procedure requires ethical justification and some have criticized this on ethical grounds — suggesting that the potential scientific gain does not justify the stress induced by this three-minute separation.