craschworks

Touching is the most intense channel of nonverbal communication and the one most people are reluctant to discuss. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, giving and receiving love and affection is a foundation element. It is like the sun in the midst of the solar system–everything else revolves around it. Touch is one manifestation of the love and consideration that all people need in order to survive. Love and touch are indivisible (Key, 1975; Montagu, 1971; Montagu & Matson, 1979). Throughout people’s lives, “touch is no short-lived event, finished when a hand is removed from the person, but rather is perceived as part of one’s history, an event of real magnitude, effecting some permanent change” (Henley, 1973, p. 96).

If touch is so important, why is it so relatively rare in the United States? According to anthropologists, the United States is a non-tactile society. In fact, compared with cultures around the world, the mainstream U.S. citizen seems to be “touchy” about touching. French parents touch their children three times more often than do U.S. parents. Men in the Middle East, Korea, China, and Indochina walk arm-and-arm or hold hands without any homosexual undertones. Jewish men are very tactile; they often embrace and kiss. Puerto Rican couples might touch approximately 180 times in an hour; French pairs touch 110 times; couples in Florida touch twice; and couples in London don’t touch at all (Axtell, 1991; Colt, 1997; Jourard, 1983; Montagu & Matson, 1979).