Child Isolation: An Irreversible Socialization Damage For Human Development?

Last time we discussed here about a useful socialization experiment conducted by psychologistHarry and Margaret Harlow. Now we want to continue our discussions and let you understand how it is important for socialization studies. Our main purpose is to see whether socialization damage, once caused by child isolation, should be irreversible or not for human development.

Child Isolation Can Cause Irreversible Damage For Human Development

We would like to point out and emphasize that the idea of the above mentioned experiment is actually similar to the child isolation story we discussed earlier about Anna. (Source: Case Study About Socialization). Being a child suffered from isolation, Anna's story is topical for irreversible damage and is therefore worth for human development studies. After only 10 days when the sociologist in-charge came back and visited her, she could show him immediate improvement and she could even smile. One month later, Anna continued to have steady progress, although such progress was still slow. She already could show certain interests in people and objects, and she could even start teaching she herself about how to walk. Around six months later, Anna could start taking care of herself with basic feeding, and she could also begin playing with her toys.

However, although Anna did have drastic improvement when she was eight years old, she still could not survive long, just like other children suffered from isolation. Anna finally died early because of blood deformity when she was ten. This is a clear evidence of irreversible socialization damage caused by child isolation, though some people may still argue about it.

As we mentioned earlier, Anna was born by her mentally-disabled mother who might have stunted her human development process and might have brought her even more irreversible socialization damage. Another case about child isolation did take place in California when a girl there was tied up inside one dark garage within her house basement. The name of the California girl was Genie. Her weight was only around sixty pounds at age of thirteen when she was eventually saved by her neighborhood. Bad news was, after Genie was saved, her language skill stayed at a level similar to young babies and this child had only mental capacity just like one-year old. As of today, she can only live in a charity home for mentally-disabled adults. Her case is another clear evidence about irreversible socialization damage induced by child isolation. It also shows us that child isolation should be so important for social and even physical development of animals or humans.

Sometimes human beings can finally recover from certain socialization damage, but no one is able to answer such recovery can be to what extent. We can only assume still no one can accurately answer this question as such irreversible damage process on human development remains unclear and we believe that every individual shall be different actually.

With the above discussions about child isolation, this is the end of our article series relating to socialization studies. We will change to another new topic from next article onwards. We sincerely hope you can bookmark our website and come back regularly to read more other meaningful contents here.

As a perfect ending, below please find our brief summary list for this article series relating to socialization studies:

(i) What is Socialization?;
(ii) Socialization Studies For Women and Men;
(iii) Socialization Case Study;
(iv) Socialization Development and Human Behaviorism;
(v) Socialization Experiment.

Thanks for your reading.