jocasta, oedipus, your trivial tug-of-war has received too much airtime. let go of the rope, already
What harry harlow showed many years ago in his ethically devastating study has been grossly disregarded. The most important relationships are with your peers. Quit blaming your parents.
The cloth monkey study, in which infant rhesus macaques were ripped from their mothers and appointed a terry-cloth surrogate on wire frame, bereft of warmth, mothering and actualization, were significantly better adept to socialization were they provided a peer group (the members of which had faced a similar harsh reality) with which to affect. Granted the repercussions of lacking a nurturing mother were severe, but they lessened dramatically when the subjects were blessed with comrades.
Extrapolation of this delicate study, or any other evidence collected from non-human primates, to humans faces ethical and scientific scrutiny, but it is my deepest belief that we impart blame unfairly, though subconsciously, to our matrons and role models for the feelings of ineptitude many of us face in our adulthood.
I strongly feel that, in the absence of a strong, validating bond with our peers during the critical personality development period of our early to mid teen years, a sense of lacking will haunt us through our adulthood, causing vicious cycles such as unhealthy romantic relationships, strained social abilities, addiction to habit-forming substances, and a general feeling of nonacceptance or insecurity in even the most comforting of friendships.
How do we recover? It never seams to suffice to admit how awkward we were in our teens, or how our peers "hated" us, does it? That may help us deal with past feelings of rejection, but it brings us no closer to rectifying the feelings of inadequacy we face present-day. How do we mend our broken teen-aged hearts?
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