We’re better at distinguishing cries of distress. In her 2021 book on “the science of moms”, Mom Genes, science writer Abigail Tucker cites studies that show new mothers are more sensitive to babies’ cries. For the truth is that maternal behaviour is both natural and social. This, in turn, points us toward feminism’s favourite hunting-ground: the boundary between nature and nurture. In the human world, some women don’t want babies at all, or feel nothing after they’re born. There are anomalies, such as mothers across many animal species who sometimes kill their babies. But nor is this bond wholly universal, or wholly automatic. It would be strange if humans were the only animal species for whom this were not the case. There is a straightforward evolutionary explanation for the maternal bond: it increases the chance that young animals will survive until they are able to take care of themselves. More from this author The rise of castration anxiety Anyone who’s seen footage of a mother elephant mourning a dead baby, or cows bellowing after their calves are taken away, can see that there’s something there. Mother bears are proverbially protective of their cubs. There are field birds who will let a tractor roll over them before they will leave their clutch of eggs. And this, in turn, raises questions about the unexpected implications of pursuing equality to its logical conclusion - questions that should give many feminists pause.ĭespite what the Grey Lady may say about maternity being male-chauvinist propaganda, there’s no shortage of evidence across many species that there actually is something unique about the bond between mothers and their young. But dig a little deeper, and this apparent effort to undermine the “naturalness” of motherhood reveals a deep progressive confusion as regards women, bodies, and babies. And when - unusually - it is Mum who abandons the kids, this isn’t shocking, it is a stimulating challenge to the ultimate taboo. Women who reject it get admiring profiles. This isn’t an isolated incident: in the past two years, motherhood has been a horror movie, an environmental catastrophe and a recipe for martyrdom. The most recent salvo was the claim last week, to widespread furore, that “maternal instinct is a myth that men created”. This is surely the most charitable explanation for an apparent ongoing campaign in the New York Times, to denaturalise motherhood.
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