Wellbeing and Nurture: Physical and Emotional Security in Childhood

While there is increasing concern about developing and reinforcing children’s physical and emotional security, researchers have been busy working out the actual mechanics,
even at the cellular level, of how this can be achieved. This report will provide a concise update on what is known about optimising children’s wellbeing and security in
childhood and far beyond.
‘As human primates, we are wired for touch, whether we like to or not’ says Francis McGlone, a professor of neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University…… ‘Brains
are good’ he says, ‘If they’re lacking something, they’ll tell you to take action.’….With
the lack of social touch mandated by Covid-19, your brain may well be telling you that
you desperately need a hug’:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/touch-skin-hunger-hugs-coronaviruslockdown-isolation-ctactile-afferent-nerve-a9501676.html
‘Evidence from previous pandemic studies shows that children isolated or quarantined
are more likely to develop acute stress disorder, attachment disorder and grief…. The
longer this continues, the more profound the difficulties will be and the greater the cost
and challenge will be to overcome them’:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/childrens-mental-healthwill-suffer-irreparably-if-schools-dont-reopen-soon
The experience of nurturing touch for infants is now known to be an essential
requirement for social brain development and the subsequent development of secure
attachment.
When the All-Party Group on A Fit and Healthy Childhood decided to contribute to the
ever-increasing public discourse about child wellbeing and nurture by making it the
subject of our seventeenth report, we did so against a society backdrop that even the
most positive of commentators would describe as ‘fractured’.
The trend towards individualism as opposed to what is understood by ‘community’ has
been thrown increasingly into sharp relief in the early years of the 21st century, but the
fall-out from the 1989 toppling of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime and
6
the exposure to world opprobrium of his infamous Romanian orphanages are equally
relevant to a 21st century understanding of child development and wellbeing.
The permanent damage to the adults that these neglected, socially starved children
have become is the subject of recent findings in the journal ‘Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences’: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911264116
and ongoing research in the UK and Sweden shows that much mental illness
experienced by children and young people today has its genesis in the early days and
months of a new life.
Basic human contact is just as central to a child’s development as nutrition. Emergent
neuroscientific evidence shows that nurturing touch is essential to foster the physical
and emotional security that every child needs in order to thrive.
The unheralded and cataclysmic effect of the Covid-19 pandemic makes these
arguments relevant in a way that we could never have envisaged originally. This report
has unexpectedly been written in a new and unwelcome world in which:
‘Milestone birthdays are being celebrated over video calls; elderly people are talking to
neighbours through windows and those who live alone are going without any human
touch at all, as they obey the government guidelines to stay at home and keep 2m (6ft)
apart from others’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52279411
‘At the still point of the turning world… there the dance is …and do not call it fixity’ (TS
Eliot, ‘Four Quartets’). Pandemics don’t stand still. Requirements for social distancing
will be removed; there will be a medical ‘answer’ to Covid-19.
But here we argue that things cannot go on as before. The experience of Covid-19 has
taught us that:
‘What’s happening now is that, for the first time in evolution, people aren’t able to
experience this thing we usually take for granted. You don’t miss something until it’s
gone – but when touch is removed, people will notice that there’s something missing,
even if they can’t pin down what it is.’ (Professor Francis McGlone: ‘The Independent’ as
above).
In examining the ways in which children grow and develop, we can learn from that
because their physical and emotional wellbeing and therefore that of our future
society will depend on it.
This report represents what we have learned and we hope that it will contribute in a
small way to the making of the brave new ‘post-Covid’ world.