The old adage, in the days of yore:

Children should be seen but not heard.

Don’t pay too much attention to your babies; it will spoil them.

In the late 1920's, a Pediatrician attended a foundling home; a home for infants who had been abandoned. He found, while attending the home, that the mortality rate for infants was extremely high.
He believed that because the infants were not carried, mothered and talked to, it was affecting their will to live; they wasted away physically and mentally, the term used being (marasmus). He established a rule, in the home, that each baby in the staffs care, would be held, carried, talked to and mothered several times a day.

This rule was followed by other instituions in the Pediactric World, and in turn the mortality rate for infants under the age of one, decreased enormously.
Touching provided the security and bonding needed for infants to thrive. In turn, they had a better chance to become loving and caring adults. Touching babies in a loving, nurturing way can have everlasting benefits.

Bonding and attachment between infants and their parents begin before the baby is born. Parents feel the baby move, view ultrasounds and hear the baby's heartbeat. It is up to us to continue the bonding process after the the birth.. The use of eye contact, touch, vocalizations and smell, in a positive way, will keep the bond between the baby and parents flowing.

Manyparents believe that bonding with their infant comes naturally. With the world as it is, with both parents having to work and the need to place the infant in the caring hands of another person, may make the bonding process more difficult. In this busy, sometime hectic world, many infants, not all, are placed in an infant seat while parents are preparing for their work day. They are placed in car seats, for their safety, when they are transferred to the substitute caregiver. The responsible baby sitter sometimes cares for three children or more a day, so again the infants may not receive the loving touch and nurturing that they so desperately need.

Many parents, after returning home after a long day at work, are tired, and many babies have their bottles propped; again, they are not receiving the loving touch of the caregiver. Normally, when babies are held during their feeding, the caregiver talks to them in a soothing way, filling the void of touch and communication.