PHILOSOPHY/HUMANITY
What Is Love?
Is this a loaded question? Perhaps.
We have all hopefully experienced feelings of love at some point in our lives. Experiencing a rush of oxytocin, the comfort of safety, and a sense of value are all wonderful feelings.
Our first models for love should have been our parents, especially our mothers. Love is essential in establishing a solid foundation in infancy. We need to have our basic needs met, someone responding to our cries, and being held to develop correctly.
How do we know? There’s a study about this.
An orphanage in Romania was the setting of a study on the effect of neglect on childhood development. A vestige of a severe communist regime, these orphanages, still operating into the early 2000s, were harbingers of neglect. Children institutionalized here often develop significant neurological disorders like ADHD, autism, and psychological issues.
But why is this the case? Limiting socialization and stable caregiving affects babies and children by physically stunting the development of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, inhibiting problem-solving, impulse control, and the ability to plan.
We know neglect in childhood doesn’t just happen in orphanages, though. So no wonder children who survive living without…
