Primal Prevention
Breaking off the greed-governed world for a while helps us forge the freedom our child will make viral
The facts
No one can reasonably deny anymore that personal qualities are on show at an early age [1]. We now discover that self-confidence and social skills – like health and resilience [60] – start being elaborated right after conception [29]. The outcome of epigenetic processes responsible for these developments during gestation and beyond is optimum when the humoral-tactile-affective environment of the new being hasn't been disturbed. Whereas if it has, in particular when its genitors or caregivers have undergone chronic stress during this primal period, it will probably suffer long-term handicaps [2, 3, 4, 5], of which relatives and the community also will suffer. Note that comparable ill effects of genitors' stress are observed in other primates and mammals [6, 7, 8, 9, 10].
A challenge
Primal prevention consists in future parents taking all measures that'll help them keep out of societal stress (and the subtle violences it generates [65]) during their coming child's primal period. Such a health promotion par excellence will provide their offspring with optimum conditions to build a serene personality, lifelong resilience, psychic and somatic healths, and to become a good parent in its future adulthood.
Nowadays, however, even convinced young adults may alas find it difficult to escape chronic, attention-devouring stress and its various consequences for the child they're about to conceive. Most of these new parents might indeed contemplate calling on third-type kin caregiving to meet the challenge. Above all, however, it's time for all of us, citizens and public servants, to act and fill the void of adequate societal measures.
Despite exceptions whose overall effects remain small, the outright abandonment of the common good by beneficiaries of a globalized economy has direct consequences on our lives, the most evident one being the persistent disclaiming of primal prevention. Therefore it won't suffice for us to passively wait till public-health professionals and economy will finally recognize the distant early warning arising from the new understanding of life sciences [64]. On the contrary, we have to actively promote this new understanding by showing how it will help us be more decisive for our future than could the naïve views our old, interventionist tradition still tries to defend by inventing the fancy name of precision medicine – or the frankly misleading one of personalysed medicine [72] – for what it claims coud get us out of the deadlock. Fortunately, it is not too late to walk back and start again in the right direction.
Nowadays, however, even convinced young adults may alas find it difficult to escape chronic, attention-devouring stress and its various consequences for the child they're about to conceive. Most of these new parents might indeed contemplate calling on third-type kin caregiving to meet the challenge. Above all, however, it's time for all of us, citizens and public servants, to act and fill the void of adequate societal measures.
Despite exceptions whose overall effects remain small, the outright abandonment of the common good by beneficiaries of a globalized economy has direct consequences on our lives, the most evident one being the persistent disclaiming of primal prevention. Therefore it won't suffice for us to passively wait till public-health professionals and economy will finally recognize the distant early warning arising from the new understanding of life sciences [64]. On the contrary, we have to actively promote this new understanding by showing how it will help us be more decisive for our future than could the naïve views our old, interventionist tradition still tries to defend by inventing the fancy name of precision medicine – or the frankly misleading one of personalysed medicine [72] – for what it claims coud get us out of the deadlock. Fortunately, it is not too late to walk back and start again in the right direction.
What will change
Disquieting results of social-epidemiology observations in developed countries [16] will have to be interpreted as reflecting the overall effects of societal stress via its early epigenetic impacts on every human during its primal life. But privileged young people already allowed to take a career break during their child’s primal period may be the first sign that a major cultural blind spot is about to be cured [11]. Sooner or later primal prevention will become common practice because eveyone will have not only the desire, but also the undefiled possibility to devote their sustained attention to their coming child in an affectively secure environment. As recently stated by Thomas Sowell [69] : "The amount of parental attention a child gets makes a huge difference in the future". It does for all of us as it will for future generations.