Con a boy. Con a woman about maternal instinct?

One thought led to another and I ended up googling for a person whose parents were friends during my California years.  In this modern world, google can sometimes be like the old gossip circuits in villages.  We hit "enter" and google might tell us way more about a person that we might imagine.

When I googled the person's name, I was shocked to read her words describing her mother as a narcissist, and how she decided to separate herself from her mother--literally, by hundreds of miles.  (Unlike my usual practice, I will  refrain from linking to the source, which--by the way--has been republished across websites.)

I do not know anything about the inner dynamics of that family, who I knew for only a couple of years.  Whether or not the daughter's feelings about her mother are true, the google search result serves as yet another reminder to me that perhaps not everybody is wired to be an awesome parent.

The question of being wired to be a parent is immaterial to me.  At some point in my high school life, I began to wonder if people had children only because they wanted somebody to take care of them in their old age.  As we get older, our bodies begin to ache and squeak and break, for which medical and financial assistance is needed.  Sons and daughters and grandchildren automatically become the insurance policy. 

Sure, people have children for other reasons too. But, none of those reasons ever appealed to me.  Even as a teenager, I knew for certain that I did not want to have children, and why people have kids continues to be beyond my imagination.  But, yes, people have kids, though nowhere like the number that they had in the past.  How many young families with four or six kids do we run into these days?

Does the fact that biologically only women can go through pregnancy and deliver babies mean that motherhood is hard-wired in women?

Chelsea Conaboy argues otherwise:

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.

(Now you see the reason behind the cheap pun in the title of this post!)

Conaboy writes: "Maternal instinct is still frequently invoked in science writing, parenting advice and common conversation. And whether we call maternal instinct by its name or not, its influence is everywhere."

What does science say about mothering?

Using brain imaging technology and other tools, and building on extensive animal literature, researchers around the globe have found that the adaptation of the human parental brain takes time, driven as much by experience — by exposure to the powerful stimuli babies provide — as by the hormonal shifts of pregnancy and childbirth.

Why should we be concerned about this?  As a society, should we care whether or not "maternal instinct" is a myth?

A little bit of thinking leads us to consider various scenarios, like:  Were serial killers kids who did not benefit from having mothers with maternal instinct?  Did the person whose description of her mother as a narcissist think that her mother lacks/lacked a maternal instinct?  If maternal instinct is needed for a healthy development of a person, can gays be allowed to adopt children?  What about a single father whose wife dies soon after childbirth?  

One can easily see that a science-based approach to understanding having children and taking care of them will lead us to substantive discussions and debates on societal responsibility for caring for children until they become adults.

Here's Conaboy:

Belief in maternal instinct and the deterministic value of mother love has fueled “pro-family” conservative politicians for decades. The United States, to its shame, still lacks even a modest paid leave policy, and universal child-care remains far out of reach. The Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 was the last serious attempt to establish a national day care system. Richard Nixon vetoed it, saying it was a “family-weakening” bill and the government must “cement the family in its rightful position as the keystone of our civilization.” Implicit in that statement was a belief about a woman’s natural place.

What's a woman's natural place, and what is a man's? And, what is a transgender's place?

Here in the US, there's one political party that wants us to engage in these important discussions, and there is another political party that is anti-science and wants to shut down any such policy debate.  Who are you going to vote for and hand over the power to legislate about these issues?