Looking at babies attentively makes us treat them differently.

Until very recently doctors didn't use analgesia when they operated on small babies, because they thought their minds were too primitive to really feel pain or to remember it if they did. This is a dramatic example, but it often seems as if we discount children's pain compared with adult pain. Child abuse isn't evil because it may produce neurotic adults but because it abuses children. Divorce doesn't have a cost because it may produce adults who have difficulty with relationships but because it causes emotional pain to children. Parents aren't important because they may shape their children's adult personalities but because they are the most profound influence on children's lives while they are children. Looking at babies attentively makes us treat them differently.

Seeing babies as young adults makes us treat them humanely; whereas, in the past, babies were denied analgesia because it was thought that their primitive minds did not sense pain the way an adult's mind did.