Medieval orality, mothers, and bonding

The role of women in the Middle Ages was vilification, veneration, and exclusion. Due to the high rates of maternal and infant mortality bonding shifted from the mother-child dyad to one in which the Church, Holy Family, and king acted as pseudo-parents. In art this is suggested by the virtual absence of eye contact between the Virgin and Christ-child. Frustration of early oral needs consequent to lack of adequate mother-child bonding prompted a reactive emphasis on orality in art and legend. A decrease in infant mortality and a reciprocal improvement in mother child bonding contributed to cultural shifts in how self-realization would be accomplished during the Renaissance and in the later emergence of secular humanism.