The very matrix of our ability to love and bond in later life, maternal sensitivity – or lack thereof – also determines cultural tenor.

Marriage is never static. There are peaks and troughs, cycles. It is easy to forget that this shifting landscape is really only ever a reflection of the self. Our capacity for attachment determines the kind of mate we attract, and it is through this mate that we are forever transformed – marriage as alchemy, but also as a mirror.

Throughout history, the most brutal cultures have always been distinguished by maternal-infant separation.

Shamefully, human beings are the only mammals to separate mothers from their infants. Dr. John Krystal,Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobiology at the Yale Schoolof Medicine, described the impact of maternal separation onthe infant as 'profound', citing the recent discovery that theautonomic activity (heart rate and other involuntary nervoussystem activity) of two-day-old sleeping babies is 176 percent higher during maternal separation.

Maternal/child attachment is mostly eroded in increments. The separation begins in hospitals, where mothers are not only made to feel inferior to medical professionals in relationto their infants, but regularly separated from their infants.