Social psychologist Alexandra Stein, Ph.D., specializes in cult phenomena and teaches courses at several universities in London. Her article, “Mothers in Cults: The Influence of Cults on the Relationship of Mothers to Their Children,” examines the impact of the cult experience on the mother-child bond. Dr. Stein notes that this bond is controlled in multiple ways:
- mothers are often discouraged from having a special bond with the child;
- mothers may spend very little or no time with their children because of the demands of the cult;
- the child is physically taken from the parents; and
- mothers’ behavior toward their children is carefully monitored.1
Stein writes: “Doing ‘the right thing’ (for God, the Revolution, one’s personal growth, whatever) becomes synonymous with obeying the leader. To go against the leader’s directive is to go against God himself. The mother becomes psychologically trapped: she wants to be a good person, but the definition of goodness resides entirely in the cult’s domain. And any attempt to define goodness for herself ensures swift condemnation and an attack on her ‘faith.’”2
In her book, Terror, Love and Brainwashing, Stein explains the basics of attachment theory that are relevant to mother-child relationships in such environments:
“John Bowlby’s attachment theory3 has helped researchers and parents to understand that the need for protection is a fundamental, evolved element of the relationship between children and parents. When all works well, children seek the protection of a safe other – usually a parent – when stressed, or under threat. There is a set of behaviors (visual searching, calling and crying, for example) that children engage in with the goal of ensuring proximity to their caregiver. In general, these behaviors cease on uniting with the caregiver and gaining comfort. This is known as the ‘attachment behavior system.’ Parents have a reciprocal ‘caregiving system’ that seeks to protect their children: in a healthy relationship, parents will feel distressed if they are unable to comfort and protect their child. When these systems are functional, the result is to protect the child in order to increase their chances of survival to adulthood.
“While this may seem obvious to those in more or less healthy family relationships, what is less obvious is how and why cult leaders consistently and predictably interfere in these evolved systems of care and protection of the young. But interfere they do, in a multitude of ways. This interference ensures that both parents and children focus on the leader or cult as the main source of ‘protection’ – which is, however, a sadly failing strategy as the cult is, in fact, the source of threat. In interfering in normal family attachments, both children and parents risk forming disorganized, or trauma-based, attachments to the group and thus also risk failing in their tasks of developing open, flexible, and responsive attachment behaviors. Disorganized attachment creates both emotional and cognitive problems, in particular; attachment problems later in life; and associated dissociation – that is, problems connecting feeling and thinking.”4
1 Stein, A. “Mothers in Cults: The Influence of Cults on the Relationship of Mothers to Their Children,” Cultic Studies Journal (Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997), pp. 44-45.
2 Ibid., p.47.
3 Note: John Bowlby was a British psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, most known for his pioneering work in attachment theory as it relates to child development. Two of his most important works are A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development (London: Tavistock, 1988) and Attachment: Attachment and Loss, Vol. 1 (New York: Basic Books, 1969/1999).
4 Stein, A. Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems (London: Routledge, 2016).
