Gadget Inspector: Hands-On Parenting
Why is the Zaky, a fifty-dollar beanbag arm, flying off the shelves?
by Sam Apple
May 8, 2007
"What attachment theory essentially says is that being loved matters — and, more, that it matters who loves us and whom we love in return," writes Blum. "It's not just a matter of the warm body holding the bottle. It's not object love at all; we love specific people and we need them to love us back. And in the case of the child's tie to the mother, it matters that the mother loves that baby and that the baby knows it."
As Bowlby's theory grew in fame, the attention of researchers, including Bowlby himself, moved away from the extreme cases of neglected infants to the attachment needs of babies in more normal environments. After all, if the absence of a mother had such a profound effect on a child, it seemed likely that the day-to-day differences in the maternal care could also affect psychological development.
In 1963, psychologist Mary Ainsworth, who had worked with Bowlby in the '50s, took the next step in attachment research. After a year of observing twenty-six mothers and their babies and then conducting a laboratory experiment in which she watched how the babies responded to being left alone and then reunited with their mothers, Ainsworth concluded that some babies were more attached than others. The securely attached infants, as she called them, were more confident and more willing to explore the environment around them in their mothers' presence. Other researchers following Ainsworth's lead would demonstrate that securely attached babies would show the same self-assuredness years later.
So, what made for a secure baby? Was Ainsworth just observing inborn personality traits? During her year of observation, Ainsworth had watched the mothers as closely as the babies, watched which mothers hurried to their babies at the first sign of unhappiness and which let their babies cry. She kept track of how the mothers played with their babies — whether So, what made for a secure baby? Doting made the difference.they were smiley and talkative or not — and how often they fed them. It turned out that all the doting made the difference. The most securely attached babies were the ones with the most attentive moms.
Ainsworth's research had laid the groundwork for attachment parenting, a term later coined by Dr. William Sears. Attachment parenting simply takes the lessons of attachment theory to their logical extreme. And this is where we arrive back at the Zaky. Because if you believe in attachment theory (there is a now also a solid body of criticism of Bowlby, Harlow and Ainsworth), the claim that the Zaky can help your baby begins to sound at least plausible. Attachment theory was built upon experiments showing that young rhesus monkeys were comforted by terrycloth mothers. Perhaps for those moments when you can't give your baby your own hand (the Zaky was invented by a mother of a premature baby who couldn't stand not being able to hold her baby in the neonatal intensive care unit at night) a soft substitute hand really is the next best thing?
This isn't to say that babies are fooled into thinking the Zaky is a parent's hand. Attachment theory is certainly right about at least one thing: evolution designed babies to be extremely sensitive to human contact and for that very reason, no amount of warming and scenting is likely to make a baby mistake the Zaky's soft fleece for skin. And, even if you want to give the Zaky the benefit of the doubt, there's still the questions of whether the doll is superior to the rolled towels hospital nurses have long placed next to newborns to help them feel snug. A soft towel can also be scented and warmed.
There's also a strange paradox surrounding the Zaky. It's designed as a substitute for your own arm and yet stitched right onto the doll is a warning that says, " THIS ZAKY IS NOT A TOY. Keep away from face. Supervise child while using it."
Still, whatever its drawbacks, the Zaky's foundation in attachment theory makes it more than just another bit of parenting weirdness.
And you can spank people with it!
©2007 Sam Apple and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sam Apple's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, and Slate.com, among many other publications. His first
book, Schlepping Through the Alps, was named a finalist for the PEN America award for a first work of nonfiction. In 2005 he received the
annual Faux Faulkner award. Apple's new book, American Parent, is on sale now. |
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