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These two books deal in quite different ways with the needs of mothers and infants. Eyer addresses a general audience, from a social point of view, about the ways that mothers in our culture have been mistreated and misled. Weil, in contrast, outlines specific ways in which elements of symptom formation can impair psychological development from infancy onward.
Eyer is vexed about the overendorsement of the concept of bonding, but she inveighs against it so sternly that one may wonder whether her real concern is something different. The story of bonding began with Klaus and Kennell (1970, 1976), both professors of pediatrics. They had observed the frequency with which young infants who are born prematurely, or suffer neonatal illness, or fail to thrive, were additionally affected negatively because their conditions stirred up anxiety or depression in their mothers. The mothers' distress then impeded their ability to provide adequate infant care and sometimes led them to neglect or abuse their infants. Klaus and Kennell, being aware of Bowlby's studies of instinctive signaling and attachment behaviors in the young of human and animal species, were led to propose that close sensory contact of an infant with the mother's body soon after delivery might promote the affectional bond necessary for their mutually positive engagement. The authors defined such maternal-infant bonding as a unique and enduring relation between mother and infant, set in motion by the mother's touching, fondling, holding, cuddling, nursing, and making eye contact with the infant, and by related responses of the infant. Their informal hypothesis was that these behaviors occur in