child’s earliest years…[but] I acknowledge that satisfactory supplementary mothering arrangements can and have been made by not an inconsiderable few.” I’m sure Case 18 is one of those few.
Another reason M from Case 18 was uncomfortable with the idea of participating in the study was that, like my mom, M wanted to breastfeed, though it was unusual at the time and she wasn’t comfortable doing it in front of anyone. And finally, F, the father, wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being studied; it turned out he had taken classes from Mary years earlier and felt like a bit of an expert himself. All of these factors made the family think it might be best not to participate in the study. So Mary and George visited the family before B was born.
The visit itself was a very intense one, pleasant in some ways, but full of strain…Every now and then either George or I would find ourselves trapped. We would mention something about the mother, and they would latch onto that, “Aha! It is not just the baby you are interested in but the mother too!”
Of course the family was correct. After much back-and-forth, M agreed, but only under the condition that Dr. A would be assigned as the home observer. When the baby was born, Mary sent flowers to the hospital, along with a card.
From the beginning, Dr. A and M had a deep connection, which developed, over the next twenty visits, into a friendship. In Visit 1, Dr. A kept her notes focused on the details of what she observed, though she also incorporated M’s reflections into her own insights.
Before B was born I think that M was very anxious and scared of having a baby…They did not even discuss what to name him. She refused to get anything in preparation for his arrival…Now that he has arrived she seems to have warmed up to him very much. She is beginning to understand his signals and certainly wants to respond to them appropriately. She is very gentle and tender and slow in her handling of B and there seems no awkwardness or tension which is surprising…She says that when he cries a hungry cry she begins to lactate, spots on her dress.
In Visit 1, M also shared her therapy with Dr. A, as well as her reasons for deciding to enter the study after much trepidation.
At the very end M told me that the thing that had decided her to participate was the second letter that I had written. The implication was that she felt that I cared about her as a person, which, of course, I do.
As the relationship developed, Dr. A came to respect M. Beginning around Visit 12 and continuing over the rest of the study, Dr. A took note of the way B responded to her as the unfamiliar person that she was—when he looked at her, smiled, played, laughed, and accepted a piece of cracker she offered. After Visit 17, she writes, “I don’t believe I’m any longer really a stranger to B.” Starting with Visit 7, Mary occasionally stayed late for drinks and dinner. They ate meals like steaks, seasoned rice with peaches, and a chef salad, over which she and F and M had “quite an intellectual conversation.”
In the notes from Visit 15, Dr. A writes:
It must be quite apparent to both parents that I enjoy these visits, that I like them and am fond of B and their interest in his development. Both of them always make me feel very welcome and M again reiterated that she hoped that we would keep our relationship up after the year’s research was ended. I, of course, would like to do this, but I know how difficult it [is].
The Baltimore Study was the first of its kind, and the last. While other studies of mothers and babies collected data points, this was no box-checking exercise. Mary and her team were looking at relational events noticed from within “critical situations,” in the midst of having very real relationships with the subjects. Instead of counting and tallying, say, M’s smiles and B’s cries in Case 18, the way mothers