We’ve just come off a “Fa­ther’s Day” and be­fore that a “Moth­er’s Day.” Do we need a spe­cial day to ho­n­our some­one who we should ho­n­our every day? I sus­pect there is more than a mild com­mer­cial in­ter­est be­hind those “days.” Or per­haps the per­son or per­sons be­hind them were try­ing to make up for not be­ing close to their par­ents?

There are many peo­ple who are not close to their par­ents. Af­ter al­most 50 years of see­ing the way some par­ents treat their chil­dren, I don’t blame them. Which is not to say that the med­ical or nurs­ing pro­fes­sion should not take some of the blame for the lack of af­fec­tion some moth­ers feel for their off­spring. Some moth­ers do not in­stinc­tive­ly love their chil­dren and have dif­fi­cul­ty with their emo­tions af­ter the birth. Such a moth­er will sel­dom make her re­al feel­ings known, since every­one ex­pects her to be in love with the new­born. This is a great hid­den se­cret of moth­er­hood and is not ab­nor­mal. Most of these moth­ers grow to love their chil­dren dear­ly, much more than their chil­dren ever love them. Some do not.

What is ab­nor­mal is when doc­tors and nurs­es place ob­struc­tions in the way of moth­ers at­tach­ing to their ba­bies. The clas­sic ex­am­ple is re­mov­ing the ba­by from the moth­er as soon as she births. Or iso­lat­ing the ba­by in a nurs­ery. Why shouldn’t the ba­by be left with the moth­er (and fa­ther) to be touched and kissed?

Why do moth­ers kiss their ba­bies? One would think this is sim­ply be­cause of the emo­tion­al bond formed or is form­ing be­tween moth­er and child. While this is so, there are some oth­er bi­o­log­i­cal rea­sons for this.

Kiss­ing prob­a­bly evolved from the habit of pri­mate moth­ers chew­ing food and pass­ing it di­rect­ly in­to their ba­by’s mouth, a bi­o­log­i­cal­ly and evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly sound prac­tice that should be en­cour­aged in­stead of plac­ing a piece of met­al be­tween the moth­er and ba­by.

If you have seen an an­i­mal give birth, or watched the An­i­mal Chan­nel, you will have no­ticed that just af­ter birth, the moth­er spends lots of time lick­ing its child. Lick­ing ex­pos­es its five sens­es to the young so the moth­er knows the taste, smell, feel, sound and sight of her ba­by. In this way, the moth­er claims the child as her own.

When a hu­man moth­er gives birth to a ba­by in an en­vi­ron­ment which al­lows her im­me­di­ate and free ac­cess to her child, the moth­er per­forms sim­i­lar be­hav­iours called “claim­ing” be­hav­iours. She ca­ress­es the child, ex­plor­ing the soft­ness of the ba­by’s skin, count­ing and fondling the fin­gers and toes. She will mar­vel over how much the ba­by looks like her, her hus­band or an­oth­er fam­i­ly mem­ber, the colour of the hair and eyes, and oth­er phys­i­cal fea­tures. She hears the ba­by’s cries and learns to dis­tin­guish her ba­by’s cry from oth­ers. As she leans down to kiss the child, she smells her ba­by, and through the act of kiss­ing the ba­by, she learns to know what he/she tastes like. She ex­pos­es her sens­es to the ba­by and at­tach­es to the ba­by. The ba­by is now hers.

It is not un­usu­al that women who are de­prived of the pri­va­cy and op­por­tu­ni­ty for bond­ing im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter birth of­ten state that there is an emo­tion­al dis­tance be­tween them and their ba­bies, that they are nev­er re­al­ly sure the ba­by is theirs, or that it takes long for the ba­by to set­tle with them or them with the ba­by. Claim­ing be­hav­iours such as kiss­ing the ba­by pro­vide not on­ly emo­tion­al but bi­o­log­i­cal at­tach­ment.

There is al­so a re­al health ben­e­fit for kiss­ing the ba­by. When a moth­er kiss­es her ba­by, she ‘sam­ples’ those pathogens on the ba­by’s body and face, the very ones the ba­by is about to swal­low. These sam­ples are tak­en up by the moth­er’s lym­phoid or­gans like the ton­sils in the throat, and white blood cells are stim­u­lat­ed and re-stim­u­lat­ed with each kiss. These cells mi­grate to the moth­er’s breasts, where they pro­duce just those an­ti­bod­ies the ba­by needs. Breast­milk con­veys ma­ter­nal an­ti­bod­ies to the in­fant and helps to pre­vent ill­ness. How­ev­er, the an­ti­bod­ies that the moth­er has made to the germs around her while preg­nant con­vey lit­tle im­me­di­ate help to the in­fant. It is the germs in the in­fant’s en­vi­ron­ment at present, the ones he/she is in con­tact with right now, which they need pro­tec­tion from.

Kiss­ing, any kiss­ing, in­clud­ing kiss­ing a new­born, is an im­por­tant bi­o­log­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, far be­yond its ob­vi­ous plea­sur­able and at­tach­ment-pro­mot­ing val­ue.