Eyes Speak a Thousand Words

This may become a tricky topic to formulate correctly without offending anyone. My thoughts on the following matter are “objective” and not related to any political or religious reasons and are based purely upon scientific reasoning.

I was sitting in the train this morning.. in the silent train compartment. Yes, we here in Holland have a silent compartment. And on this morning it was ram-jammed and it so happened that a mother and child found themselves in a seat in this area. I have never ever found the need to create silent areas in which a cough or a sneeze could already fuss up some uptight man or lady… but we had ourselves a lucky fussed-up and stressed lady. She seriously could not handle the fact that the cute baby was enjoying itself and giggled. I mean seriously be grateful that it wasn’t yelling or crying. But the stressed out lady started sighing really loud to make a statement: pathetic.

Anyways, I’m off topic. The thing I noticed was: the mom was wearing a burqa and was covered completely in black fabric except her eyes. Again I’m not hinting at anything religiously related or I’m also not trying to make a statement of any kind but: I was wondering what the effect of only seeing eyes would be for the baby.

Children that do not speak yet use other senses to communicate. So I wonder, what would the effect be (speaking hypothetically) if a child could only see his mothers eyes. Do eyes say enough? Do they really “talk” as all the romantic Frank Sinatra songs say they do? Or will the lack of other facial language such as frowning or smiling effect the childs social abilities? Anyone out there know any interesting articles on this matter/subject? Philosophical articles are certainly welcome or other theories.

Bibliography

Image 1: ANP.Verbod op Boerka gaat niet door in Zwitserland.Metronieuws.28-12-2012. 18-02-2014. <http://www.metronieuws.nl/nieuws/verbod-op-de-boerka-gaat-niet-door-in-zwitserland/SrZliB!uedQO8JydXsU/&gt;.