Archive: Reviews and Reactions
Why Love Matters is currently Routledge Mental Health's bestselling title with a massive 15,232 copies sold in its first year!
- On the Couch: Brighter later, by Oliver James, (The Observer Magazine, October 2, 2005)
...As Sue Gerhardt chronicles in her important and very readable book, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain, high and low cortisol are associated in adulthood with most mental illnesses, from depression to eating disorders to alcoholism. She also records how early experiences set our baselines for serotonin (low levels of which are connected with depression; high levels with violence) and abnormal brainwave patterns in the frontal lobes...
- Comment & Analysis: Bring on the backlash: Women urgently need to push the feminist debate about care beyond the personal, by Yvonne Roberts, (Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 15, August 2, 2004)
Sue Gerhardt, writing about her research into babies, also on these pages, discovered that in the development of the "social brain", love counts. According to the Pope, the expression of love for women in itself should be sufficient reward, but in the economic circumstances of the 21st century, the next question cannot afford to be personal, "so why don't you stay at home?" It is political: so why is that love, in all its manifestations, so poorly esteemed?...
- Cradle of civilisation: In order to develop a 'social brain', babies need loving one-to-one care, by Sue Gerhardt, (Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 21, July 24, 2004)
...What I discovered was that the attention that we receive as babies impacts on our brain structures. If we find ourselves cared for by people who love us, and who are highly sensitive to our unique personalities, the pleasure of those relationships will help to trigger the development of the "social brain"...
- Minding the baby: Rebecca Abrams applauds Sue Gerhardt's clear-sighted assessment of child development in Why Love Matters, (Saturday Review: Book of the week - Guardian Saturday Pages, Pg. 9, July 17, 2004)
When researchers studied the brains of Romanian orphans - children who had been left to cry in their cots from birth and denied any chance of forming close bonds with an adult - they found a "virtual black hole" where the orbitofrontal cortex should have been. This is the part of the brain that enables us to manage our emotions, to relate sensitively to other people, to experience pleasure and to appreciate beauty. These children's earliest experiences had greatly diminished their capacity ever to be fully human. Sue Gerhardt's book Why Love Matters shows that early experience has effects on the development of both brain and personality that none of us can afford to ignore...
- A handful of trouble: The fudged ban on smacking is a confusing cop-out and bad news for parents and children alike, (Daily Telegraph WeekendParents & Education Pg. 11, July 10, 2004, Saturday). NB: Subscription required to access this Daily Telegraph article.
According to a new and important book, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's Brain ... the rapidly developing brains of babies and toddlers are highly sensitive to the hormones released by frightening events, especially painful physical contact...
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