Aggression is not violence. An aggressive person may not be violent. Aggression is behaviour characterised by verbal or physical attack, yet it may be appropriate and self-protective. It may also be destructive. The most common form of destructive aggression takes place in the home. It’s called abuse. It has many forms: physical, sexual, emotional or psychological and others, financial, domestic and the forgotten one, neglect. Neglect of mothers and children.
The impact of these various forms of violence on women, children and adolescents is complex, but one result appears clear: the number of aggressive and violent youth has been increasing dramatically since the turn of the century.
The most dangerous children are created by a malignant combination of experiences. Developmental neglect (rejection or lack of love) and traumatic stress (violence) during childhood create violent, remorseless children. Both rejection and violence are two sides of the same coin. In fact, the first violence done to the child is the act of rejection.
In order for the brain to grow and develop, it needs to be stimulated. A rich array of sensory stimuli, of all the senses, maximises development of the brain. If we do not get the sensory stimulation we equate with love, bonding and intimacy during the formative periods of brain development, i.e. the first three years of life, we will all be impaired in our ability to experience and express this “language of love” later in life. After three years, it is very difficult to correct the damage done.
When children under the age of three are not surrounded with affection and security, the neural systems required to experience pleasure are not developed. This leads to an individual and a culture that is self-centred and violent.
The key actor in this play is the mother. But the whole issue of rejected children is bound up with the problem of domestic abuse and an almost equal partner in this tragedy is the father. If the mother, for whatever reason, is unable to give her babies or young children love and security, then the child will feel abandoned. If not helped by someone, emotionally abandoned children grow up to be violent children.
We see this clearly in children who have been abandoned by their parents to orphanages. Psychologists repeatedly talk about the tremendous sense of anger that these children feel. If not helped, some of these abandoned children go on to become criminals.
The violence we are seeing around us is mainly due to the violence which very young children experience growing up. The first act of violence being the violence of rejection. To be unloved by your mother or father, or both, and not to find someone to love you, is violence with robbery. The robbery is the theft of love and security.
Father Gerard “Gerry” Pantin maintained that we are reproducing in our society the “conditions for the emergence of a male warrior class”, viz., “1) Children reared apart from their mothers, 2) Male status determined by combat and sexual conquest, and, 3) Economic gain separated from what is needed to support one’s family and made into an end in itself.”
Father Pantin believed the first ingredient, the “seeds of crime and violence,” starts when the young child, aged one or two years, begins to be repeatedly beaten or rejected by his mother and that this atmosphere of violence continues as the child moves out into the wider society with its loss of community spirit and absence of role models to take the place of the lost parent.
Every single individual who cares for children, be it psychologist, religious person, social worker, teacher, paediatrician etc., believes this to be the truth. Yet an experienced politician and a caring mother responds to the problem of school violence by saying, “Send them home!” Home to the very situation that is responsible for the violence.
Years ago, Dr Ashley Montagu, the famous developmental anthropologist, wrote: “The basic plan of the mother-infant relationship, from conception to birth, and onward, is that the loving behaviour of the mother and child for one another confers survival and growth benefits upon each other. In this beautiful mother-and-child interconnectedness and interaction, the basic pattern is laid out for humanity to follow toward the achievement of healthy growth and development, that is, to live as if to live and love were one.”
Babies and toddlers who do not grow up feeling safe and loved become violent children.
