You Need to Be Touched

It turns out that frequent touching and cuddling, a spontaneous form of massage, not only helps infants thrive, it also contributes to adult happiness.

In the mid-1980s, while a visiting professor of psychology at Boston University, Carol Franz, PhD., unearthed a 1951 child-rearing questionnaire completed by the mothers of 400 Boston children who were kindergartens. Thirty-six years later, in 1987, Dr Franz located 94 of the kindergartens, then 41. Using a four-hour battery of surveys and interviews, she assessed their adult happiness -- their enjoyment of their jobs, marriages, children and friends and their general zest for life.

Nothing that people typically consider prescriptions for happiness had anything to do with how fulfilled the participants felt. Their parents wealth or poverty had no impact on their adult happiness. Neither moves, major injuries or even parents divorces, alcoholism or death. Dr. Franz discovered only one clear predictor of later happiness -- warm, affectionate mothers and fathers who cuddled their children and enjoyed spending time with them.

"I've always been affectionate with my children," says Dr. Franz. "That's just how I am. But the study suggests that parental warmth and affection from fathers as well as mothers equip children to create happy adult lives for themselves."

Douglas Adams is the owner of All Wellbeing.com , a website dedicated to increasing knowledge of health related issues.

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