What do we really mean by "maternal instinct"?
Thoughts on maternal ambivalence and Chelsea Conaboy's book, Mother Brain
After my first year of PhD research, I had what’s called an “upgrade.” This is when you show the work you’ve done so far to a small board of advisors, and they decide if you can officially be admitted as a PhD candidate (or else reverted to an MPhil). It’s as nerve-wracking as it sounds, but then again it follows only one year of research as opposed to the four years of anxiety nightmares, sweat and tears you carry into the actual defense, known as a viva in the UK.
Like many PhD students, during the upgrade I was advised to narrow my focus. I had roughly the first chapter of my thesis and an entire first draft of my novel to show for my first year. I admit I was probably trying to do too much in my thesis and it benefitted from the feedback I received.
What I cut out was a lot of scientific debate about maternal instinct. What it is and isn’t, how it’s used, where it comes from, if it’s real. And even though my opinion about this term remains in my thesis, I approached it through the lens of fiction — the development and characterization of non-maternal characters — rather than science. This was a much better use of my time because it centers on writing novels (which is what I was doing) rather than psychology and biology and lots of other -logies that, frankly, I don’t really understand well enough to unravel. But the topic still fascinated me. All this talk about a maternal instinct and yet I knew plenty of women, including yours truly, who did not feel even the tiniest urge to have a baby. I know a lot of bad mothers, too, so how could we as a society believe that being a mother was something we all just innately knew how to do? How could a job as huge as being a parent be dismissed as a simple instinct rather than the very hard work I believe it to be?
Enter Chelsea Conaboy and her New York Times Opinion piece, Maternal Instinct Is a Myth That Men Created. Finally, there it was in black and white and backed up by science.
New research on the parental brain makes clear that the idea of maternal instinct as something innate, automatic and distinctly female is a myth, one that has stuck despite the best efforts of feminists to debunk it from the moment it entered public discourse. -Chelsea Conaboy in The New York Times, August 26, 2022
Before I was advised to narrow my focus (and even after, when I could find the time for reading outside my thesis), I had learned that scientists saw little difference between men’s and women’s brains, that male mice could respond to pups cries in the same way as female mice, that many of the SIDS-reported cases in the past were likely cases of homicide. There are examples of non-maternal females everywhere I look, which begs the question: how can “maternal instinct” (or anything for that matter) be deemed innately female?
Chelsea’s piece preceded publication of her book, Mother Brain, which I purchased and read voraciously. But I was surprised when I read it. I had believed, based on her essay, that the book would be devoted to debunking the myth of maternal instinct by unraveling its history as a patriarchal invention. And she does, but the majority of the book explains how the brain actually works, in layman’s terms. Chelsea shows how a parent’s brain evolves to become a parent, proving that it doesn’t exist as such before the child exists, and that parenting abilities are not relegated to female or even biological parents. Adoptive parents, step parents, fathers — everyone learns the same way.
To me, as someone who is not likely to have children and has no desire for them now, this is reassuring. It means that scientifically, there is nothing wrong with me. I’m not missing any vital pieces of my female brain (haha). It also means that my perception of motherhood is accurate: it’s work, it’s a job I would need to actively choose. It doesn’t just come naturally because I am a woman. I have always known this to be true, and it was of course articulated decades, if not centuries, ago by leading feminists. But for some reason, nobody believed them…
Such a strange thing, this not believing that women know what’s best for them.
Anyway, I had the great pleasure of speaking to Chelsea about her book as a guest host on the podcast, The Story of Woman. She came to the topic through her own unexpected experience with motherhood, and her writing style is both informative and approachable. During our conversation, we covered many facets of the book, but my burning question was this: If women aren’t hard-wired for motherhood, and instead the transition is complicated, developmental work, we might rightly believe that parents are consumed by that work. And if we give in to that idea of being consumed by it, doesn’t that risk perpetuating the idea that women only need their children to be fulfilled?
Chelsea provided a graceful and informative answer:
That early stage is really intense and I think it is undeniable that our focus is pulled to our children. It's necessary. And it eases over time. And I think both things can be true, that we are fundamentally changed by having kids and we still wanna be humans out in the world, right? Just because we are changed by them doesn't mean that our whole focus is them…Maternal instinct I think has this piece attached to it that [says] it is an instinct that overcomes all else…when in reality these brain changes happen in the context of the brains we already have…it's not subsumed by the parental brain. We grow with the brains we already have, which includes, you know, our interests and our strengths and also our challenges. You know, all the capacities we have come with us. Chelsea Conaboy, The Story of Woman Podcast, S3:E3
Wow! Such an incredible response that honors the changes parents undergo while also valuing individual women as whole human beings, whether or not they are parents. If you are as impressed as I am with that answer, I hope you will read Chelsea’s book and listen to the podcast. It was such a fascinating conversation. She’s also on Substack, writing Between Us.
I am going to have to disagree with you. The dna of the mitochondria comes only from the mother. To the child. This cell change, means that there are theories of attachment which are based in science and developing science of attachment after birth as well. Why does a human child take so long to develop outside the mother? This is me, as a mother, and working much of my time from a distance as well. The question you are asking and developing may be different. Does everyone want to be a mother is a different on, as is can male mice pick up on certain reflexes.
Indigenous Science uses spirit, and Western Science, chaos, and this entity is also of value.
My friend did her Masters on the mother child bond and found that mothers take care of their own first, before others' children, where hunger is an issue.
Of course - Mother Brain doesn’t discount the biological connection, but looks at how parenting itself is a developmental, learned practice.