ABSTRACT
It seems to me that concerns regarding the devastating effects of asocial organisation with little or no awareness of, or respect for,the importance of emotional life-and the necessity for it to be protected and facilitated to allow everyone the acquisition of emotional maturity-should be reinforced by the awareness of the fact that this lack of attention not only has an impact on the mental health of individuals, but can and will affect the mechanisms of our reproduction and survival as a species. The lower birth rate in our society may already be ascribed to the challenging nature of current material living conditions: the necessities of work, the pressure of financial independence, and a general insecurity. However, in my experience, low birth rates should also and increasingly be ascribed to more or less explicit emotional difficulties that eat away at our trust in any reproductive endeavour. If we do not take adequate care of our children, we will have unhappy and insecure adults (Brazelton & Greenspan, 2001; Spitz & Cobliner, 1965). Society seems to be able to respond to this concerningly common weariness by technological prosthetics for childbirth, eliminating suffering, or making it possible to have children artificially. But prosthetic technology fails to answer many questions: it never helps growth, and it colludes in hiding the
insecurities that lay behind the difficulties and leaves them unmet, masking them with an apparent success. What has been missingbeing heard, time, passion, and dedication-will continue to be missed, since no one understood that these things are what was needed in the first place. Suffering is, thereby, hidden instead of becoming understood and met, the only real instrument for change.
