No more hugs?

Angela

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It seems people have forgotten all of the research on this subject. Touch, or physical contact with other human beings, is essential for human mental and even physical health.

People had better not let this media nonsense make them afraid of engaging in it. Speaking personally, I'm a very "touchy" person instinctively, and I think it draws people to me. I'm not talking about invading someone's personal space completely, but it's a wonder how much a gentle pat on the arm or back, or stroking a child's hair or cheek can do. People aren't necessarily even aware of it, but it completely changes the reactions.

See:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/07/crisis-touch-hugging-mental-health-strokes-cuddles

"[FONT=&quot]Carlson met Harlow as a freshman... In his laboratory, she witnessed monkeys that as infants had been deprived of their mother’s touch. In social groups, they would “go off in a corner, self-grasping, staring into space.” She saw similar patterns of behaviour in humans three decades later when she visited [/FONT]orphanages in Romania[FONT=&quot], a legacy of Ceausescu’s regime, where tens of thousands of infants were raised with minimal human touch."

"[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]We know from the science of what goes on under the skin that when the skin is moved, pressure receptors are stimulated,” she says. This “slows down heart rate, blood pressure and the release of cortisol”, which gives people better control over their stress hormones.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
Being touched increases the number of natural killer cells, “the frontline of the immune system. Serotonin increases. That’s the body’s natural antidepressant. It enables deeper sleep,” Field says. "

"“This is what I’m concerned about,” McGlone says. “If this evolutionary system is in any way disturbed or interrupted, brains are good at finding compensation. It could be drugs or alcohol ... If you remove a reward system, the brain will try to find some other way to get that reward.”"[/FONT]
 
1. Being a tactile man with a woman can be judiciary fatal for the man. 2. There is more and more Asperger people in the world, that dont really feel the tactile action. There is more chance that modern moral or environnement are responsible for people being less tactile than before, than a conservative education.
 
I find this "touch hysteria" and "progressive back-to-19th-century morals" absolutely incomprehensible. That's even worse in countries that already had cultural norms against being "touchy", even in the subtlest of ways, because it's supposedly an "invasion of one's privacy".

I was recently asked about Brazilians' "sexualizing" their children because they often wear short clothes, dance and are very touched by adults. What?! I mean, if there is anything really abnormal in this topic, IMO it is exactly that adult people are seeing some kind of undue sexualization in simple things like dance, revealing clothes (actually totally adapted to the local climate conditions) and, worst of all, healthily intimate social relations with other people, including adults. This hysteria can reach the point where some children are convinced by other adults that they were oppressed and abused by adults who were actually doing a pretty acceptable behavior (I knew of one such case here, where the girl was convinced by relatives that she was abused by a man just because this man used to hug her and put her in his lap, and she only noticed it was all a lot of paranoia when she became an adult. How traumatizing must that have been?!). I know we must be aware that there are predators out there, but I wonder if these excessive "good intentions" may make more mental harm and create unnecessary tensions and suspicions, than effectively protecting children and women.
 
It's hard for me to feel any reward being hugged, I usually focus on the unpleasant feeling of being smothered, but I go along with it out of respect for the person who wants the hug.
 
I think the answer is too simple. If you have a baby who gets fuzzy, but when you hug her, she calms down and seems happy... keep doing it.
If you have a baby who apparently dislikes it, you don't force yourself on him. You also tell other relatives "stop, he doesn't like it".
The first example is my daughter.
The second one was me.
 
I don't think there is any correlation between being "tactile" and being a sexual predator. In fact, whatever part of being a pedophile is not genetic is, I have a hunch, tied to not having had enough appropriate physical and emotional contact with people, among other things.

People who are significantly on the autism scale hate being touched, but I'm sure parents see other clues as well. That has nothing to do with how other babies should be treated.

That said, I don't particularly like being hugged by most people here. There's something "false", or "awkward" about it, something that I don't normally feel about embraces in Italy. All of that said, I normally wouldn't want a total stranger hugging me even in Italy.

@Ygorcs,
I don't get this about nudity in children either. On an Italian beach it's rare to see a little girl wearing a bathing suit top. Anyone who finds that "sexually provocative" is suspect, imho. Just as I find it distasteful how skittish men here become at the sight of men kissing. My father and brother always embraced and kissed, as my father always kissed his father and brothers. In Italy male friends kiss, put their arms over each other's shoulders, link arms, etc. It doesn't mean they're gay.

I find all of this stuff so stupid. It's just sad how many people aren't comfortable with their bodies or with the human body in general. Representations of naked men and women are everywhere you turn in Italy. Nobody turns a hair. In my childhood women routinely still breast fed in public in the more rural areas. Here you're somehow corrupting young minds if they see a female breast. You can't even show a statue in class or you'll just get giggling and juvenile jokes. It's bizarre.
 
I don't think there is any correlation between being "tactile" and being a sexual predator. In fact, whatever part of being a pedophile is not genetic is, I have a hunch, tied to not having had enough appropriate physical and emotional contact with people, among other things.

People who are significantly on the autism scale hate being touched, but I'm sure parents see other clues as well. That has nothing to do with how other babies should be treated.

That said, I don't particularly like being hugged by most people here. There's something "false", or "awkward" about it, something that I don't normally feel about embraces in Italy. All of that said, I normally wouldn't want a total stranger hugging me even in Italy.

@Ygorcs,
I don't get this about nudity in children either. On an Italian beach it's rare to see a little girl wearing a bathing suit top. Anyone who finds that "sexually provocative" is suspect, imho. Just as I find it distasteful how skittish men here become at the sight of men kissing. My father and brother always embraced and kissed, as my father always kissed his father and brothers. In Italy male friends kiss, put their arms over each other's shoulders, link arms, etc. It doesn't mean they're gay.

I find all of this stuff so stupid. It's just sad how many people aren't comfortable with their bodies or with the human body in general. Representations of naked men and women are everywhere you turn in Italy. Nobody turns a hair. In my childhood women routinely still breast fed in public in the more rural areas. Here you're somehow corrupting young minds if they see a female breast. You can't even show a statue in class or you'll just get giggling and juvenile jokes. It's bizarre.
There is actually huge modern issues with that last part. For exemple, on YouTube there is people making videos about kissing girls or other very sexual matters, in a scenarized way. 80% of the people looking those videos are less than 12 years old kids, we know by the YouTube stats and the way they react to those is... interesting. If you look at a random video and in the comment section a girl just saying " hey ! " she's gonna get flagged as a *****, or receive bad words etc. So why am i actually talking about YouTube when it's not even the real life ? Because actually this is most of the life of modern kids, they are so oversexualized and so young that become ridiculous.
 
I find this "touch hysteria" and "progressive back-to-19th-century morals" absolutely incomprehensible. That's even worse in countries that already had cultural norms against being "touchy", even in the subtlest of ways, because it's supposedly an "invasion of one's privacy".

I was recently asked about Brazilians' "sexualizing" their children because they often wear short clothes, dance and are very touched by adults. What?! I mean, if there is anything really abnormal in this topic, IMO it is exactly that adult people are seeing some kind of undue sexualization in simple things like dance, revealing clothes (actually totally adapted to the local climate conditions) and, worst of all, healthily intimate social relations with other people, including adults. This hysteria can reach the point where some children are convinced by other adults that they were oppressed and abused by adults who were actually doing a pretty acceptable behavior (I knew of one such case here, where the girl was convinced by relatives that she was abused by a man just because this man used to hug her and put her in his lap, and she only noticed it was all a lot of paranoia when she became an adult. How traumatizing must that have been?!). I know we must be aware that there are predators out there, but I wonder if these excessive "good intentions" may make more mental harm and create unnecessary tensions and suspicions, than effectively protecting children and women.
Yeah i'm not really sur why i said " conservative moral ". I think i might be thinking more of a normal education. Personnally i like when in summer there is beautiful girls everywhere liking to their own thing, those are lambda beautiful people, like lambda beautiful trees, you can appreciate a little bit the view and it's refreshing. I like The thing is, there is a lot of men and women who dont see things like this. Incels, 3rd wave feminism in their respective way.
 
There is actually huge modern issues with that last part. For exemple, on YouTube there is people making videos about kissing girls or other very sexual matters, in a scenarized way. 80% of the people looking those videos are less than 12 years old kids, we know by the YouTube stats and the way they react to those is... interesting. If you look at a random video and in the comment section a girl just saying " hey ! " she's gonna get flagged as a *****, or receive bad words etc. So why am i actually talking about YouTube when it's not even the real life ? Because actually this is most of the life of modern kids, they are so oversexualized and so young that become ridiculous.

None of this has anything to do with what I posted.

In America there was a huge furor because Janet Jackson's breast became accidentally exposed during her performance at a sports event. In the same country sex is starting as young as 11 and 12, contraceptives are being handed out in middle school, there are extraordinarily high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and there are lots of births to very young, single girls.

There is a huge disconnect.

The naked human body does not corrupt. Sexualizing children does corrupt. It's an entirely separate thing.
 
None of this has anything to do with what I posted.

In America there was a huge furor because Janet Jackson's breast became accidentally exposed during her performance at a sports event. In the same country sex is starting as young as 11 and 12, contraceptives are being handed out in middle school, there are extraordinarily high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and there are lots of births to very young, single girls.

There is a huge disconnect.

The naked human body does not corrupt. Sexualizing children does corrupt. It's an entirely separate thing.
Ok i understand your point know.
 

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