Columnists
Touch Me Not
T. SHER SINGH
DAILY FIX
Saturday, May 12, 2012
I recall a question posed to wanna-be executives during the course of interviews for short-listed candidates several years ago:
You are entertaining a large group of business clients at a formal reception held in your home. There are over a hundred guests milling around in the living room. You are in the thick of the crowd when it suddenly parts in front you.
Running towards you, with arms out-stretched, wearing nothing but a big smile from ear to ear, is your two-year old daughter. She‘s obviously escaped from the clutches of the baby-sitter and has made a bee line for you.
You have two seconds to react.
Quickly, what's the first thing you'd do?
The interviewees gave the following answers:
“I would immediately take my jacket off, cover her up, and take her back to her room.”
“Ask my wife to take her to her room, dress her up and put her to bed.“
“Speak to my daughter, calmly and softly, and tell her patiently that it was wrong to come out into the public without clothes on. And send her back to her room.”
“Ask the baby-sitter to leave whatever she was doing and take her back to her room,”
“I would lead her back to her room, have my wife or the baby-sitter attend to her. And then apologize to the guests for the intrusion.”
What puzzled psychologists who had formulated and monitored the test was that no one came up with what would appear, on calm reflection, to be the only reasonable answer:
“I would pick her up and give her a big hug and kiss!"
There were two factors that may have played a role in the types of responses received. First, these answers come from a few decades ago, when attitudes to nudity, any nudity, were more prudish.
Secondly, all the interviewees were single, child-less males.
I put exactly the same question to my daughter when she was in her late teens, and I recall her answer was: “What’s the big deal? Pick her up and gradually make your way back to her room. So?’
I expect most people, male and female, would react this way today.
In this regard, attitudes have changed for the better in some ways.
But, unfortunately, we have acquired new hang-ups, some of which may have a devastating and life-long impact on people’s lives - and on society as a whole.
We do not, for example, have much physical contact with other human beings any more. Touching, and to a certain extent, hugging and kissing - especially in public - are often relegated a sexual connotation when none should or does exist.
I recall, with some nostalgia I must confess, when one greeted children - any and all cildren, not just your own - with open affection. You cuddled them - sometimes too much, to their chagrin - you coddled them, kissed them, nay, slobbered over them, hugged them, pampered them, played with them, and gave them candy if you had some around.
All of that is gone by the wayside - for understandable reasons, I might add. Too many horror stories have made us vary. Possibly too vary. Some would say, never too vary.
Through sheer necessity, we warn our children now to beware of strangers before we even wean them. We teach them the disillusionments of adulthood even before they have lived their childhood.
It goes even further.
I recall a time, as I grew up in India, when friends embraced each other when they met in public. They held hands when they walked together. They touched each other to make a point or merely to express an emotion. That is, male friends did so with each other, and female friends with each other. In public.
And then, one day - I remember the incident clearly because it was as if the innocence was stolen right in front of my eyes - somebody yelled out, in a public place, at two guys as they sauntered along, laughing, talking, joking, and holding each other’s hands.
The heckler taunted them as “homos” - homosexuals. Each instantly withdrew his hand, and uncomfortably, self-consciously, hid it in his pocket.
Homophobia has taken a bigger toll than we can imagine.
While we have preyed on gays and lesbians, we have done damage to ourselves.
It is not acceptable - in most circles now - for men to touch men anymore unless, of course, you are knocking each other’s brains out in the hockey arena.
And women don’t touch women anymore.
To understand the damage it must do to human relations, one has to remember that one of the first things that happens when things start going wrong between spouses or lovers is that they stop touching each other.
Sensory deprivation is what those who are more knowledgeable call it.
Things go downhill from that point on.
But today, we are doing the same with our children. We are teaching them - albeit with the best of intentions - to grow up cold.
Noelle Oxenhandler, writing in The New Yorker, once said it most succinctly: “Not touching children can also be a crime.”
Conversation about this article
1: Rosalia (Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.), May 13, 2012, 9:54 AM.
Tactile or sensory deprivation is what Mother Teresa described as "poverty of touch," the scrounge plaguing North America, despite its wealth. It afflicts many elderly people who live alone as years can go by before anyone touches them, or they touch anyone, and worse yet, visit with anyone. I remember reading somewhere that babies who are not touched during infancy will fail to thrive and die from failure to thrive. Open affection and touching is a major component of the Italian culture - and so it is hard for people thus wired to adhere to an unspoken bubble of space surrounding others, including ourselves - in public. But when it comes to family and being in our own homes, the bubble of space is non-existent and thus while reading your piece, I found myself wondering why none of the responses included scooping up the baby and kissing her as nearly everyone in the room, including unmarried males, knows that we all come into this world naked, nothing quite equals the innocent beauty of a child joyful at seeing her parent, and that regardless of what takes place in a business environment, home is sanctuary for family members and especially for children. I do believe Noelle Oxenhandler's quip: Not touching children can also be a crime. I'd like to add: Not touching the elderly who are shut-ins is also a crime.
2: Sangat Singh (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), May 15, 2012, 6:42 AM.
Here is a reverse situation: A famous photo studio run by a husband and wife team (for good form) were commissioned to photograph a nude model and while she was posed in a rather provocative position, their 3-year-old daughter wandered into the studio and examined the nude model rather critically and quipped: "Look, mummy, she is not wearing her shoes!"