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Have you been following the tale of Punch the monkey? For those unaware, Punch is a baby macaque housed in a zoo in Japan, who was abandoned by his mother after birth.
Videos of the cute primate have been going viral online, because he is inseparable from a cuddly toy orangutan donated by his keepers at Ichikawa City Zoo.
Perhaps Punch has been tugging on our heart strings because his behaviour illustrates one of the innate and essential drives in human children – for companionship and physical affection.
But his situation is also intriguing psychologists because it has inadvertently mimicked a key experiment from the 1950s, which shaped child development research and ultimately led to one of the most controversial ideas in parenting advice today: the concept of “gentle parenting”.
Back in the 50s, a widespread school of thought called “behaviourism” held that children form bonds with their parents mainly because they are the source of food and shelter.
A US psychologist called Harry Harlow overturned these ideas, when he studied how baby macaques separated from their mothers responded to different mother substitutes.
In a now-classic experiment, he provided each baby with a crude monkey model covered with a soft material, as well as a second model made out of hard wire that dispensed food and water.
The babies clearly preferred the soft mother substitute, cuddling up to it nearly all the time, despite the fact they had to get their food elsewhere. It was theorised that this instinct helps keep infants close to their caregivers.
The experiments – which Punch’s behaviour today show were no fluke – helped establish the idea that it is crucial for children to get physical comfort and love from their parents to support their mental well-being.
Together with work by British psychologist John Bowlby, who studied human children who had been separated from their mothers, the work led to behaviourism being replaced by “attachment theory”.
This emphasises the importance of children forming a secure bond with their caregiver, and says that child development can suffer if parents are cold, neglectful or abusive.
Punch’s behaviour appears to back up aspects of attachment theory, which provides a basis for much modern parenting practice (Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)From attachment to gentle parenting
No one sensible would argue with the idea that parents should be loving rather than neglectful towards their children. But just how far we should take things is still debated by scientists and has real-world implications for people today struggling with different parenting advice.
For example, some attachment theory advocates claim that exclusive breastfeeding is necessary for babies to form a secure bond with their mum. But this can be painful to hear for women who were unable to breastfeed for any reason – and anyway, there is no evidence that bottle-fed babies love their parents any less.
Attachment parenting has led to the closely related “gentle parenting” movement, which, believes that when children misbehave, they should be corrected with calm explanations and cuddles rather than raised voices or punishment.
“They showed very clearly in the 1950s that the most important thing for the health and the well-being of a developing child is strong attachment, nurturance and close physical contact,” says Sarah Ockwell-Smith, one of the leading UK advocates of gentle parenting.
When my children are young, I was no gentle parent, but I can see how it is a better way than the old-school “Victorian parent” approach to discipline. On the other hand, gentle parenting gets stick if people see children misbehaving in public and believe they are going completely undisciplined.
Ockwell-Smith says gentle parenting was being maligned unfairly. “We do say no to children,” she said. “We take things away from them, we stop them doing dangerous things.
“The difference is when the child cries afterwards, we would say, ‘Come on, let me help you calm down’ or give them a hug, whereas old-school authoritarian parenting would probably yell at them even more.” And Punch the monkey proves exactly why hugs are so important for kids.
Michelle McHale, who founded Attachment Parenting UK, which runs courses for parents, said the term gentle parenting can be misleading. “It puts pressure on parents to be gentle all the time, which some understand as not having boundaries,” she said. “People misunderstand it as permissive parenting.”
Ockwell Smith adds: “You will find gentle parents throughout civilisation. They just didn’t call themselves that.”
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