Ashley Montagu

Ashley Montagu (1905-1999), Anthropologist
Child Health

Quotes
... circumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society. ---Ashley Montagu (1905-1999), Anthropologist

They are expelled rather roughly and usually taken away from their mother, which is wrong. It's physiologically/psychologically wrong. Both baby and mother need each other more at that time than they ever will again. The baby should be put to nurse at his mother's breast whereupon it induces an enormous number of wonderful changes in the mother, such as an arresting of the postpartum hemorrhage, which no obstetrician can do under the circumstances, but a baby can do. Which indicates that there is more intelligence in the upper and the lower lip of one baby than all the brains of all the obstetricians put together. Ashley Montagu Interview by Michael Mendizza

Love: what is love? Well, to spell it out briefly, it is the ability to communicate to others your profound involvement in their welfare, such that you will never commit the supreme treason of letting them down, whenever they most stand in need of you, and that you will minister to and encourage the growth and development of their potentialities. That's love. Ashley Montagu Interview by Michael Mendizza

We know that we're all born with physical needs, like the need for oxygen, for liquid, for rest, activity, sleep, and so on. These must be satisfied if we are to survive physically. The extraordinary thing is that we're also born with basic behavioral needs. These are the need for love, about which we know very little, the need for creativity, the need for sensitivity, the need for learning, the need for the acquisition of knowledge, the need for play, for song, for dance, for curiosity, for imagination.
All these are basic behavior needs, which are as much a part of our genetic system as the physical needs. Yet, we haven't recognized them. Look at any textbook on the nature of human nature and you won't find any mention of them. Ashley Montagu Interview by Michael Mendizza

See: James W. Prescott, Ph.D.

Ashley Montagu, Ph.D. and James W. Prescott, Ph.D.