I’ve never watched an episode of “Big Brother” and don’t ever plan to, but for some reason part of this Associated Press article on the new season caught my eye when the Des Moines Register published it:

Libra Thompson, a married 31-year-old human resources representative from Spring, Texas, left behind her husband and three children — including 4-month-old twins — to participate in “Big Brother 10.” During production, Thompson and the other “Big Brother” contestants are prohibited from communicating with the outside world.

Hang on, I thought–doesn’t the taping of this show go on for a long time? I flipped back to the beginning of the story and found that indeed, contestants are isolated in a house for three months.

When I started writing this post, I looked for the link to the AP story to see if it mentioned the age of Thompson’s older child, and I realized that the Register’s print version cut out part of the relevant passage:

Libra Thompson, a married 31-year-old human resources representative from Spring, Texas, left behind her husband and three children — including 4-month-old twins — to participate in “Big Brother 10.” During production, Thompson and the other “Big Brother” contestants are prohibited from communicating with the outside world.

“It’s better for me that they’re younger,” said Thompson of her newborns. “At four months old, they’re not going to remember much. It’s probably going to be a little bit more difficult for my 4-year-old. However, I’m going to stay focused and remember the reason I’m here, and that’s the cash. That will help me.”

That is a big trauma to inflict on your children for money. I know that $500,000 is a lot of money, but Thompson isn’t a homeless, unemployed person who has no way to feed her family besides appearing on this show.

I had to laugh when I read this description of her strategy:

Strategy: “I’m intuitive. I think I’ll be able figure out how to push people’s buttons.”

I wonder if Ms. Thompson is “intuitive” enough to realize that disappearing for three months could permanently affect her children’s bond with her and ability to form secure attachments generally.

I wouldn’t seek to impose my parenting style on others. I wouldn’t judge any woman for going back to work when her children are young, or for taking overnight trips away from young children (for business or vacation). But to deprive children of the sight, sound, smell and touch of their mother for three full months, for no reason other than a desire to make money, is deeply disturbing.

I assume the children will receive loving attention from their father and substitute caregivers. Nonetheless, I worry that such a lengthy separation from the mother could have lasting effects along the lines of those described in this scholarly paper by a psychologist:

Bowlby (1973) identified three phases of a normal response to separation. The child first protests the loss and uses attachment behaviors to try and bring back his mother. When Mother does not return, the child seems to despair, but still awaits her return. Eventually he seems to detach and appears to lose interest. However, attachment behaviors will return upon reunion if the separation has not been too extended. Following reunion, the child whose parent has been appropriately responsive to his attachment behaviors will often cling to the parent, demonstrating anxiety at any hint of separation.

Bowlby’s theory provides a new perspective on clinging behavior, or separation anxiety. In contrast to traditional psychoanalytic models which viewed separation anxiety as a displacement of some other fear (Bowlby, 1988), Bowlby saw anxious attachment as the result of real or threatened separations or temporary abandonments by caretaking figures during childhood (Bowlby, 1973). When a child knows that an attachment figure will be available whenever he needs a secure base, he will develop a lifelong ability to tolerate separations well, and will handle new situations confidently. Lacking such knowledge, he will demonstrate anxious attachment and general apprehensiveness at new ventures.

The availability of an attachment figure during childhood also influences the person’s response to losses. When a frightened child needs his mother but ultimately finds that he is abandoned and alone, he protects himself from further suffering by detaching himself from any awareness of his feelings and needs. Summarizing studies of children who underwent prolonged separations, Bowlby (1980) noted detachment as the final stage of dealing with a separation. During detachment, the child stops emitting attachment behavior and even turns away from attachment figures when they return (as Robertson’s [1952] film of a two-year-old’s week long hospitalization and separation from his parents poignantly demonstrates).

Bowlby saw detachment as the result of a deactivation of the system of attachment behavior. By defensively excluding from awareness “…the signals, arising from both inside and outside the person, that would activate their attachment behavior and that would enable them both to love and to experience being loved” (Bowlby, 1988, pp. 34-25), children experiencing prolonged separations can block attachment behaviors and its associated affects. Once established as a defensive process, detachment then becomes the child’s characteristic coping style.

I don’t care if Thompson “turned it out” during her audition for Big Brother. In my opinion, the producers of this reality show should not have selected a mother with such young children as a contestant. But hey, anything to attract an advertiser-friendly demographic like thirty-something working moms.

I find it more revealing that there’s no public outcry from the self-appointed defenders of “family values.” Why are social conservatives not calling for a boycott of CBS or its advertisers if the producers of “Big Brother” do not send this contestant home to her children?

Apparently a show that celebrates leaving small children in pursuit of money is not as worthy of condemnation as various sitcoms and drama programs that have been called anti-Christian.