According to Reich, the problems of parenting a free child actually begin before conception, with the need for a prospective mother to free herself as much as possible from chronic muscular tensions, especially in the pelvic area, which may inhibit the optimal development of a foetus. As Reich points out, the mother's body provides the environment for the child from the moment the embryo is formed until the moment of birth, and strong muscular armouring in her pelvis as a result of sexual repression or other emotional problems is very detrimental. Such a mother will have a bioenergetically "dead" and possibly spastic uterus, which can traumatise an infant even before it is born by reducing the circulation of blood and body fluids and making the energy metabolism inefficient, thus damaging the child's vitality.
Moreover, it has been found in many studies that not only the physical health of the mother can influence the foetus. Various psychological stresses influence the chemical and hormonal environment, affecting the foetus. Even short ones, when acute, can have significant effects on it.
Immediately after birth, it is important for the mother to establish contact with her child. This means, basically, constant loving attention to the baby, expressed by plenty of holding, cuddling, playing, etc., and especially by breast feeding. By such "orgonotic" contact (to use Reich's term), the mother is able to establish the initial emotional bonding with the new born, and a non-verbal understanding of the child's needs. This is only possible, however, if she is in touch with her own internal processes - emotional and cognitive - and bioenergetic core, i.e. is not too neurotically armoured (in Reich's terminology). Thus:
"The orgonotic sense of contact, a function of the . . . energy field of both the mother and the child, is unknown to most specialists; however, the old country doctor knew it well. . . . Orgonotic contact is the most essential experiential and emotional element in the interrelationship between mother and child, particularly prenatally and during the first days and weeks of life. The future fate of the child depends on it. It seems to be the core of the new-born infant's emotional development." [Ibid. p. 99] It is less crucial but still important for the father to establish orgonotic contact as well, although since fathers lack the primary means of establishing it — namely the ability to breast feed — their contact can never be as close as the mother's (see below).
A new-born child has only one way of expressing its needs: through crying. Crying has many nuances and can convey much more than the level of distress of the child. If a mother is unable to establish contact at the most basic emotional ("bioenergetic," according to Reich) level, she will be unable to understand intuitively what needs the child is expressing through its crying. Any unmet needs will in turn be felt by the child as a deprivation, to which it will respond with a wide array of negative emotions and deleterious physiological processes and emotional tension. If continued for long, such tensions can become chronic and thus the beginning of "armouring" and adaptation to a "cruel" reality.
The most important factor in the establishment of bonding is the tender physical contact between mother and infant is undoubtedly breast feeding. Thus:
"The most salient place of contact in the infant's body is the bioenergetically highly charged mouth and throat. This body organ reaches out immediately for gratification. If the nipple of the mother reacts to the infant's sucking movements in a biophysically normal manner with sensations of pleasure, it will become strongly erect and the orgonotic excitation of the nipple will become one with that of the infant's mouth, just as in the orastically gratifying sexual act, in which the male and female genitals luminate and fuse orgonotically. There is nothing 'abnormal' or 'disgusting' in this. Every healthy mother experiences the sucking as pleasure and yields to it. . . . However, about 80 percent of all women suffer from vaginal anaesthesia and frigidity. Their nipples are correspondingly anorgonotic, i.e. 'dead.' The mother may develop anxiety or loathing in response to what would naturally be a sensation of pleasure aroused in the breast by the infant's sucking. This is why so many mothers do not want to nurse their babies." [pp. 115-116]
Reich and other libertarian psychologists therefore maintain that the practice of bottle feeding is harmful, particularly if it completely replaces breast feeding from the day of birth, because it eliminates one of the most important forms of establishing bioenergetic contact between mother and child. This lack of contact can then contribute in later life to "oral" forms of neurotic character structure or traits. (For more on these, see Alexander Lowen, Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, Chapter 9, "The Oral Character"]. Lowen believes that the practice of breast feeding should be continued for about three years, as it usually is among "primitive" peoples, and that weaning before this time is experienced as a major trauma. "[I]f the breast is available to a child for about three years, which I believe to be the time required to fulfil a child's oral needs, weaning causes very little trauma, since the loss of this pleasure is offset by the many other pleasures the child can then have." [Depression and the Body, p. 133]
Another harmful practice in infant care is the compulsive-neurotic method of feeding children on schedule, invented by Pirquet in Vienna, which "was devastatingly wrong and harmful to countless children." Frustration of oral needs through this practice (which is fortunately less in vogue now than it was fifty years ago), is guaranteed to produce neurotic armouring in infants.
As Reich puts it, "As long as parents, doctors, and educators approach infants with false, unbending behaviour, inflexible opinions, condescension, and officiousness, instead of with orgonotic contact, infants will continue to be quiet, withdrawn, apathetic, "autistic," "peculiar," and, later, "little wild animals," whom the cultivated feel they have to "tame." [Op. Cit. p. 124]
Another harmful practice is allowing the baby to "cry itself out." Thus: "Parking a baby in a baby carriage in the garden, perhaps for hours at a time, is a dangerous practice. No one can know what agonising feelings of fear and loneliness a baby can experience on waking up suddenly to find himself alone in a strange place. Those who have heard a baby's screams on such occasions have some idea of the cruelty of this stupid custom." [Neill, Summerhill, p. 336] Indeed, in The Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, Lowen has traced specific neuroses, particularly depression, to this practice. Hospitals also have been guilty of psychologically damaging sick infants by isolating them from their mothers, a practice that has undoubtedly produced untold numbers of neurotics and psychopaths.
Also, as Reich notes, "the sadistic habit of circumcision will soon be recognised as the senseless, fanatical cruelty it truly is." [Op. Cit., p. 68] He remarks that he has observed infants who took over two weeks to "recover" from the trauma of circumcision, a "recovery" that left permanent psychological scars in the form of chronic muscular tensions in the pelvic floor. These tensions form the first layer of pelvic armouring, to which sexual repression and other inhibitions (especially those acquired during toilet training) later add.
The diaphragm, however, is perhaps the most important area to protect from early armouring. After observing infants for several years in a research setting, Reich concluded that armouring in babies usually appears first as a blocking of free respiration, expressed as harsh, rough, uneven, or laboured breathing, which may lead to colds, coughs, bronchitis, etc.
"The early blocking of respiration seemed to gain importance rapidly as more children were observed. Somehow the diaphragmatic region appeared to respond first and most severely to emotional, bioenergetic discomfort." [Ibid., p. 110] Hence the infant's breathing is a key indicator of its emotional health, and any disturbance is a signal that something is wrong. Or, as Neill puts it, "The sign of a well-reared child is his free, uninhibited breathing. It shows that he is not afraid of life" [Op. Cit., p. 131].
Neill sums up the libertarian attitude toward the care of infants as follows: "Self-regulation means the right of a baby to live freely without outside authority in things psychic and somatic. It means that the baby feeds when it is hungry; that it becomes clean in habits only when it wants to; that it is never stormed at nor spanked; that it is always loved and protected." [Op. Cit. p. 105]
Obviously self-regulation doesn't mean leaving the baby alone when it heads toward a cliff or starts playing with an electrical socket. Anarchists do not advocate a lack of common sense. We recognise that adults must override an infant's will when it is a question of protecting its physical safety. As Neill writes, "Only a fool in charge of young children would allow unbarred bedroom windows or an unprotected fire in the nursery. Yet, too often, young enthusiasts for self-regulation come to my school as visitors, and exclaim at our lack of freedom in locking poison in a lab closet, or our prohibition about playing on the fire escape. The whole freedom movement is marred and despised because so many advocates of freedom have not got their feet on the ground." [Ibid., p. 106]
Nevertheless, the libertarian position does not imply that a child should be punished for getting into a dangerous situation. Nor is the best thing to do in such a case to shout in alarm (unless that is the only way to warn the child before it is too late), but simply to remove the danger without any fuss. As Neill says, "Unless a child is mentally defective, he will soon discover what interests him. Left free from excited cries and angry voices, he will be unbelievably sensible in his dealing with material of all kinds." [Ibid., p. 108] Provided, of course, that he or she has been allowed self-regulation from the beginning, and thus has not developed any irrational, secondary drives.