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HUMAN TOUCH IN OUR LIVES Attitudes toward touch affect us all. The way a culture understands the role of touch in human lives has a profound impact on the way its people grow, develop, and engage with their physical and social environments. Is touch a necessity or an indulgence? What impact does it have on our physical and psychological health? Is the desire for tactile contact healthy, dysfunctional, or even dangerous? At various points in time, different societies have come up with very different answers to those questions. For those of us trained as massage therapists and bodyworkers, popular perspectives on touch have a powerful impact on both our personal and professional lives. In this article, we'll take a close look at human touch from a historical and physiological perspective, exploring a range of views that have held sway in the past and the facts we now know about the role of touch in the human life cycle. AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD TOUCH A critical milestone in this country's perspective on touch was the 1894 publication of The Care And Feeding Of Children: A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses (Appleton and Company). In this book, pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt decried "old-fashioned," hands-on methods of caring for babies. As Holt's theories became popular, doctors began to discourage mothers from "spoiling" their infants with too much handling and cuddling. Babies were put on strict feeding schedules; they skipped sleeping in the mother's bed or even a cradle and went right to their own enormous cribs; they spent most of their days alone; and they were touched only as often as necessary to keep them clean and fed. At most, parents might bestow a kiss on the forehead at bedtime and shake hands in the morning. In the common perception, this was the only way to raise children who would be strong and independent enough to cope with a hard, cruel world. These basic principles remained popular, especially among the upper classes, until around the mid-1950s. We know now that this approach to child rearing did far more harm than good. As a result of this long-lived fad, generations of people have grown up in this country deprived of loving human touch. Those hardest hit by such misunderstandings were the most vulnerable of human beings: infants. At the end of the 19th century, orphanages were an everyday part of the American social landscape. Unwanted babies were deposited in these institutions, where modern antiseptic procedures and adequate food seemed to guarantee them a fighting chance for a healthy life. However, about 99 percent of those babies died before they were seven months old.1 The large majority of them ended up wasting away, but not from infectious diseases or malnutrition. Sterile surroundings didn't cure them, and having enough food made no difference. These babies died from a completely different kind of deprivation: lack of touch. When babies were removed from these large, impersonal institutions and placed in environments where they received physical nurturing along with formula, the condition reversed. They gained weight and finally began to thrive. Today, medical authorities recognize that touch is vital for survival in the very young. We know now that it is not only OK, but actually important to pick up and comfort a crying baby. Nonetheless, we're still dealing with visit massageandbodywork.com to access your digital magazine 103