Maslow’s Pyramid has finally been given a good remodeling. And it’s about time, that’s all I can say. Maslow’s long been a hero of mine, but the builder in me has been thinking about rebuilding his pyramid for awhile now using a number of recent social neuroscience’s findings as more up-to-date blueprints.
For those of you who may have forgotten Maslow’s contribution, he basically wrested psychology away from the Freudians and the behaviorists in the 1950s and 60s and put a human face it. He made the blasphemous claim that psychological and spiritual growth and development didn’t simply stop once the human body stopped growing, but rather, Maslow proclaimed that we humans have the potential to develop throughout our whole lives. This dovetails nicely with recent research confirming that our brains, well-cared for, hold the potential to remain plastic and resilient throughout the lifespan.
Self-Actualization Makes it Happen
The highest level of development for Maslow showed up in “self-actualized” people like Einstein, people who are “reality centered” and easily able to differentiate true from false. Self-actualized people are also “problem centered” – meaning they have integrated neural networks with good Executive Function that they can deploy in the service of identifying problems and working over whatever span of time is necessary to solve them. Maslow suggested such people were comfortable being alone – rather than having 50,000 friends on Facebook, they had a handful of healthy personal, face-to-face relationships.
Another person Maslow drew the qualities of self-actualization from was Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism. Based on the teachings of the Tao, Maslow suggested that the ways in which people fulfilled their essential needs are just as important as the needs themselves. Taking care of survival needs by selling home loans to people who can’t afford them, and who will be majorly stressed trying to make the payments, Maslow didn’t feel was necessarily the best path to self-actualization. Rather, by establishing meaningful, authentic, helpful connections to people places and causes outside ourselves – essential components of self-actualization – we become spontaneous and creative, loosen the binds of strict social convention, and begin do the work of making the world a truly better place for all. Were he alive today, I have little doubt Maslow would be a contemplative neuroscientist!
Peak-a Boo, I Feel You
Central to Maslow’s psychology were moments of extraordinary self-encounters known as Peak Experiences. He described these as profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture. Such moments elevate us above the day-to-day suffering of the world, while at the same time making us more aware of truth, justice, harmony, goodness, and compassion. Aren’t these things we would immediately sign ourselves and our kids up for if we only knew where, when or how?
Well parents are beginning to learn how, and according to Doug Kenrick and his colleagues at Arizona State University, this is one of many things that qualifies parenting for the new top spot on Maslow’s pyramid. Might this mean that parenting will begin to warrant increasing respect across the wider culture? It means precisely that in my book, literally. Because what happens in the early years reverberates profoundly all through the lifespan, I’ve long considered it to be the most important job on the planet. (To order, click here. 
)
Parenting Isn’t Brain Surgery
“Parenting is much more complex than brain surgery,” says San Francisco State professor Ruth Cox, herself a Maslow scholar and a parent. “It requires parents to be flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable virtually 24/7, in perpetuity (borrowing freely from Dan Siegel here). But when the brain operation’s done, brain surgeons get to go home or go play golf. Parents get to keep working on their own and their children’s brains – not to mention hearts, minds, bodies and souls. And they have to shepherd and spur growth and development that doesn’t stress or overwhelm all while the patient is awake and often resisting!”
A Late Change of Heart
I never wanted to be a parent. Based upon my own early experiences as a kid, I didn’t see much upside in it. The costs of raising children and sending them to college ranges from a quarter to half a million dollars, and the financial return on that investment is generally a negative number. Nevertheless, at the age of 36 I found myself somewhat ambivalently embarking on the journey. But no one told me that becoming a parent would profoundly change my neurophysiology not to mention my hormone composition. Giving birth doesn’t only change mom’s hormone levels. The two gallons of testosterone I’d been producing daily immediately dropped by a third and my prolactin levels increased by as much as 20%, changes that began to radically alter my world view. As a father I could actually feel more neural resources suddenly become available to me, making me better able to manage anxiety, think more creatively, while becoming much less self-centered. Becoming a parent also expanded my awareness and desire for truthfulness, justice, harmony, goodness, and compassion. All truly Maslow-ian in the grand hierarchy of things.
It’s not “Maslow’s” anything anymore if they’re changing it.
I think being successfully mated and raising children well is an expression and means of increasing self-actualization. Not the only one; one of many.
Many times in my life, older women (mostly Catholic and Mormon, in these cases) have talked to me about the spiritual advantages of motherhood. I was childless into my 30′s. I didn’t know what they meant until my own children were nearing adulthood. They’re grown now, and I can see it. There are things I know (emotionally and viscerally–so they must have come physically and biochemically to some extent) that my childless friends don’t know. I can see the point made. And I’ve been with my husband for over 30 years, and we know things that younger couples don’t know, that divorced couples missed learning.
But there are MANY childless and unmated people who can and have become “self-actualized” and this chart knocks them down more than a notch.
Have to agree with Ryan’s response 9-7 above. Taken at face value, the new pyramid should not even be a side bar to Maslow’s original. It is simply another perspective on the original and appears to represent a conservative and limited mind set.
And yes, Where’s the beef? Where is the spiritual growth and development….left to the church? One step backwards for humanity.
I was reading between the lines and assumed that it was all behind the words on the steps of the pyramid…haven’t read the whole.
I love the line parenting being more complex than brain surgery.It is and we scar the patient ( s) so often. Maslow is a kind of hero – really for kids- who reap his rewards.
Cathy Jo Cress
http://momlovesyoubest.wordpress.com/
Hi Mark and all,
What great discussion, with a lot of wonderful voices coming to the front. I had not read this post until my wife said “Hey, you know that guy that writes that parenting article we get links to via email….”
I didn’t even know she was reading it, but you have offered our family, and this community, something juicy to chew on.
As a father of 2, with whom I have had many joyous, loving, exceptional experiences, I deeply appreciate the honoring of parenting.
As a Transpersonal Psychologist, I deeply lament the apparent removal of spiritual growth and development from Maslow’s model (hierarchical or spiral) by a group of neuroscientists with, from reading the links in your article, a firm grounding in the traditional materialistic and positivist paradigm.
As one concerned with diversity issues and social activism, I am troubled by the reformation of the model as it seemingly puts hetrosexuality and childbearing as the norm. Nay, I would go even further and say this reformation goes beyond putting it at the norm but placing literal parenting as the ultimate goal of one’s life. That scares me, and likely those who choose to remain childless (or who cannot have children for physical reasons). However, it might gain a lot of support from those individuals, businesses, and conservative religious organizations in California who have supported the Prop 8 campaign intending to enforce the definition of “marriage” as between a man and woman. I understand that wonderful parenting may happen within loving homosexual relationships, but models such as the one proposed could too easily be twisted for sociopolitical reasons. All I am saying is that we must be careful how we proceed.
And I remain hopeful we keep in sight the intention behind Self-Actualization and the Being Needs (Maslow’s later work) – that of personal (and collective) “spiritual” growth and development.
Hi Mark, Interesting column.
Having studied Maslow for some time, you have presented an interesting concept to ponder. Maslow’s pyramid wasn’t meant to be a linear hierarchy but sometimes linear is the best solution for communicating with minds that are educated in linear schools.
As for parenting being at the top…wish that was so for me…became a parent way too early. However, I would put grandparenting at the top as it took me so long to get to the self-actualizing step that my children were half raised. My grandchildren (I am blessed with 4) are around me on a daily basis. I definitely have more tools in my toolbox these days….after an education in psychology and art and all my life experiences. And my grandchildren are in a holistic Waldorf school that teaches a range of humanistic styles and not the lopsided linear/behavioral. Now, my grandchildren might be parents that are at the top of the hierarchy at a young age. Golden goal. Toni
Dear Mark
I have not been receiving your wonderful work for some months as I was subbed under an email address that I did not renew… and I forgot to resub to you. A friend spoke about you recently and I was like “Oh my gosh – I miss those emails!”. Well 3 days in, I am in love with your work again and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the work you do and the accessible way you write about it. You will have made a difference to the lives of countless children and your legacy will be and already is, a great one.
Many thanks! & looking forward to the next installment!
With warmth
Hilary in NZ
Thanks Mark!
You have, as on other occasions, inspired a vivid discussion that seems to bring many of us to re-consider, appreciate, question, and debate
Maslow aside (given that, like some, I am not keen on a linear, fixed model of any kind, though acknowledge that some material functions merit logical organization — like my house resting on a solid foundation) I, too, am grateful for the privilege of being a parent. Indeed, many of the peak experiences I recall have been with my kids (and thanks to them). With my daughter off to college, I know that there had to have been some foundational ways of being with her these past 18 years, to cultivate the closeness we have with each other as two women.
That being said, if you recall, our collaborative parenting article extended the parenting experience beyond the parenting of children (parenting our thoughts and emotions is subjected to similar creativity, nurturing, and the release we need to cultivate in the interpersonal, parent-child dynamics). With that, those who are not biological/adopting/guardian parents may still benefit from these parenting conversations (not only as adult children). But for that, I think, we’d have to be willing to put “parenting” way lower on the hierarchy of needs, as it might very well influence our affiliations and choices of intimate relationships.
I actually think that Maslow was correct in assigning basic survival needs to the bottom, necessary, base of the hierarchy. Why?
In North America, if those needs are not met – or we don’t believe they are sufficiently met (we all have differing standards, of course, but at base we must keep the body alive) – then we must spend an inordinate amount of time seeking to do so. At the expense of many other parts of the pyramid. It appears to be the same in other countries.
What about the groups of homeless that gather to create community? Aren’t they meeting those belonging needs, in spite of barely meeting the survival needs? Yes. Are they creating strong, stable, healthy affiliations? Having worked a little bit within this community, I would say no. This does not mean there isn’t genuine affection and love. There is.
In terms of a hierarchy we don’t exclusively meet the basic needs, then the next step, then the next step. It is a hierarchy in terms of fully meeting the needs, not an insulated process at each separate level.
If you must leave the area to find food, but your friend can’t go with you, and you have no Facebook or phone to help you stay connected (and no address for snail mail), your affiliations are more susceptible to the vagaries of survival than if you have a stable way to meet your survival needs (be that independent wealth, a job, or a reliable shelter and soup kitchen.)
What, then, of people who lose their ability to meet their survival needs through atrocities like war and imprisonment, or natural disasters? Does this mean that they are no longer able to actualize at the same level that they once were?
For a while I don’t think the circumstance makes much difference to where one is in terms of their self-actualization. We believe the struggle to survive is temporary and the world will right itself. These are the people who often seem wise beyond their circumstances.
For years I lived in poverty but, having grown up middle class, and having parents who bailed me out on occasion, my work in the upper reaches of Maslow’s hierarchy was compromised, but what I had gained was not particularly lost. Eventually, I recognized that someone who chose to live in a way that daily stressed her over whether or not the rent would be paid, and how much she could eat without depriving her son, was not meeting safety needs, let alone social obligations or friendships (a lot of my relationships were about being rescued by those who were more secure, and rescuing those who were less secure.)
Sure, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is just a concept, a theory, but I think there is a place to understand our development as one thing coming after another – loosely, not as absolutely discrete steps. And, that once you really “get it” – once “it” is developed, it cannot be undeveloped.
Having gone on, I think I’ll post some of this on my website, Mark, with a link to your post for a new look at Maslow.
Mark, and interesting topic and some thought provoking comments too.
Anecdotally, I too was (and probably still am) an ambivalent father, but the experience has opened up worlds that I did not know existed. Certainly, there have been huge shifts psychologicially and spiritually. In addition, I am sure my limbic system has been rewired, my amygdale grew and then shrank, and there must have been some neo-cortical changes too. Are you aware of any neuroanatomical / pysiological research in this area?
Perhaps, adults without kids do not have this experience, but who says the road to self actualisation has one path?
Curious about how this applies to those of us who reach the end of our childbearing years without becoming parents. Does that mean we can’t achieve full actualization? Must we parent, figuratively, or spend time with children in other ways? Is this what neo-Maslow is trying to say?
Abraham Maslow, as one of the forefathers of Transpersonal theory, continues to be one of my “theory heroes.” I draw upon this theory of human motivation in my therapy practice and strive to be mindful not to get tripped on the steps of the pyramid. I take issue with the hierarchical suggestions yet Maslow articulates that we have both deficiency and growth needs and this to me implies a circular or spiral approach to meeting ones needs. Just like mountain climbing, one climbs high and sleeps low – overload and adapt if you will. It’s a straight path but never a straight climb to the summit.
When I compare the Parenting Pyramid and Maslow’s original Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid, I see a new theory on an original template, both of which speak of the evolution of consciousness. Thanks Mark, for your exemplary building skills!
Maslow’s hierarchy was a problem – not the needs but the idea that the ‘basic’ have to be fulfilled.
For instance Frankl observed that a meaning made a difference to whether people lived or died (hence you could argue that meaning was the most basic need). The social critique is that in Maslow’s understanding only wealthy and comfortable people could evolve – in reality the poor can be just as in touch with self-actualisation as the wealthy. So I’m not a fan of the original hierarchy (as a list or pie chart I think it is useful and insightful).
I have no problem with putting parenting at the top of the hierarchy but it isn’t consistent with the evolutionary basis (for males anyway). And once again I’m not happy about a hierarchy – are those who aren’t parents really lesser people? It also doesn’t mention the quality of the parenting (which I gather our genes don’t care about). I’m not sure why (in evolutionary terms) parenting rates higher than affiliation – if the tribe doesn’t stick together they’d all be dead. And I can’t see why status and esteem rate higher than affiliation.
I find these kinds of hierarchies a bit of a worry really. And I think they don’t follow from the theoretical basis proposed.
None of which is to denigrate the importance of parenting – I think it is the most important job there is.