Government officials are doing irreparable harm to families seeking asylum. They are separating children from their families, no matter the age of the child.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and over 200 other child welfare organizations, which have become increasingly sensitized to early life stress, have condemned the practice of child-parent separations. The head of the AAP, Colleen Kraft, has written an op-ed against it.

She says: “Officials at the Department of Homeland Security claim they act solely “to protect the best interests of minor children.””

Hardly. Is it ignorance or malice? We don’t know, but the justifications sound both ignorant and malicious.

What ignorance are they displaying? Here is a short description:

Human children are not like other animals. They are born so immature they look like fetuses of other animals till about 18 months of age. In the first years of life, children co-construct their biological and social capacities, organizing their basic features around the experiences they have.  The norms for our species is the evolved nest. One specific need that separation denies is physical affection from known caregivers. This need among social mammals like us was well documented by Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments. Young monkeys deprived of their mother’s touch developed into aggressive and autistic (socially awkward) individuals, never to recover.

Extensive distress shifts development, undermining what otherwise develops in a loving supportive environment –biologically healthy systems and social engagement. Instead extensive distress enhances primitive survival mechanisms in ways that grow to harm self and others—e.g., the stress response becomes hyperreactive. Because the first years of life are so sensitive to experience, the individual may never recover to reach their full potential (although they may recover enough to survive—i.e., what is often called “resilience”).

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