Have you ever wondered what
would happen to a child’s brain if you left them in front of the TV all
day? What about kids in bright, happy daycare-like situations where
there’s no personal attention. What kind of future do they have? How
about children who have all the money in the world but no parental
attention? Are they really worse off than poor children with no
material advantages? Consider the flip side: How do children from
career-criminal families differ from other children?
I just read Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential–and Endangered by Maia Szalavitz, a science
journalist, and Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist, a great
book in which these questions are explored. Szalavitz and Perry track
the neuroscience of qualities like resilience and empathy—and the lack
of them—through a series of case studies, mostly of children who have
been treated by Perry. I met Szalavitz once. She’s a rock-solid science
journalist who’s walked where many reporters fear to tread,
writing vividly about the more disturbing side of life in The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog and Help at Any Cost.
“Born to Love” is in the same vein–many of the stories, which are
compulsively readable, have a straight-out-of-the-twilight-zone quality.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Szalavitz and Perry's story of a young girl called
Trinity from Los Angeles. Trinity was one of eight sisters from the
same mother and father, and many more siblings from her mother and father separately. She survived
a childhood of deprivation, abuse, addiction, and the cruel murder of a
young family member. That she made it to adulthood is remarkable
enough, but even more amazing is the fact that Trinity grew up to be a
loving human being. In her adult life, in her job and her family, she
gives strength and comfort to many people. How is this possible? Where
does resilience like this come from? Szalavitz and Perry bring a wealth
of information about the brain and the body and genes to this question.
Their investigation of the strange forces that shape people—even the
way that attitudes and ideas can influence bodies and brains—is similar
in spirit to Norman Doidge’s "The Brain That Changes Itself," but crucially it’s about the most
vulnerable population out there, children.