Just when we thought we were done with the old idea of the maternal instinct, it has made a comeback under the guise of science. American pediatricians in the 1970s led the way in a movement that continues to draw new followers in Europe. Its pioneers focused on ethology, reminding women that they are mammals, equipped with the same hormones for mothering as other mammals: oxytocin and prolactin.
Apart from freakish cultural exceptions, women have evolved to bond with their babies automatically and immediately, thanks to a neurobiological chemical process. If that bonding does not happen, the blame lies with the mother's environment or her own psychopathology. The studies underpinning these arguments were defended by anthropologists, child psychiatrists, and a large section of the American media, which popularized the theory. The media were far less efficient, however, in making public the scientific opposition to this conformist theory, which suited everyone so well.
Maternal instinct was back in fashion. In 1981, I argued in my book
Mother Love
that the mother's instinct is not innate. When the book's American editor wrote to Bruno Bettelheim, inviting him to contribute a preface, he responded:
I've spent my whole life working with children whose lives have been destroyed because their mothers hated them ⦠. Which demonstrates that there is no maternal instinctâof course there isn't, otherwise there wouldn't have been so many of them needing my servicesâand that there are many, many mothers who reject their children ⦠. This [book] will only serve to free these women from their feelings of guilt, the only restraint that means some children are saved from destruction, suicide, anorexia, etc. I don't want to give my name to suppressing the last buttress that protects a lot of unhappy children from destruction.
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The Bonding Theory
Ten years after British psychologist John Bowlby began to develop the basis of attachment theory (emphasizing the critical importance of the bond between mother and baby), American pediatricians John Kennell and Marshall Klaus put forward a theory about the bond. They claimed the mother felt a biological need to have physical contact with her baby immediately after the birth, which was essential for establishing a proper relationship between the two. “The saga of bonding”
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began in 1972 with the publication of an article by John Kennell, Marshall Klaus (who also promoted the doula), and others in the
New England Journal of Medicine.
Convinced that women have the same instinctive behavior as other species, they applied this notion to new mothers:
In certain animals such as the goat, cow, and sheep, separation of the mother and infant immediately after birth for a period as short as one to four hours often results in distinctly aberrant mothering behavior such as failure of the mother to care for the young, butting her own offspring away and feeding her own and other infants indiscriminately. In contrast, if they are together for the first four days and are then separated on the fifth day for an equal period, the mother resumes protective and mothering behavior characteristic for her species when the pair is reunited.
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Applying their arguments to observations of new human mothers, they concluded that an additional sixteen hours of contact after the birth between a mother and her newborn enhances their bond. During this “sensitive” or “special attachment” period, a newly delivered woman is predisposed to accept her child. The contact made at this time secures the mother-child relationship and benefits the child's continued development.
The concept of a “sensitive period” for maternal attachment was very quickly institutionalized. Klaus and Kennell did the rounds of American hospitals, organized workshops with professionals, and, in 1976, published a book that had a significant impact,
Maternal-Infant Bonding.
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“The notion of bonding seemed to strike a chord in groups as diverse as fundamentalist religious organizations and feminists,” wrote Diane E. Eyer in her critique of the theory. “Organizations promoting natural childbirth and the mass media popularized the idea. Hospitals provided special rooms for bonding.”
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In response to the despair and guilt felt by parents who had not experienced this bonding, Klaus and Kennell published another book
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in 1982, hoping to reassure them: “Obviously, in spite of a lack of early contact ⦠almost all ⦠parents become bonded to their babies.” In order to reassure fathers and mothers, but without losing sight of their “sensitive period” theory, they now stated: “There is strong evidence that at least thirty to sixty minutes of early contact in privacy
should be provided for every parent and infant to enhance the bonding experienced.”
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Over a period of a decade, this theory sparked a great deal of debate, not only in the United States and Canada, but also in Europe. Some deduced that the failure to bond at birth was the root cause of child abuse or of children's behavioral problems. The notion of bonding itself changed and expanded: from the connection made in the first hours after birth, it came to encompass the link joining a mother and baby during the whole first year of life.
T. Berry Brazelton, the most famous pediatrician of the time, was among those who pleaded in favor of women staying at home with their child for this period. During a 1988 television program, he explained that the first year made all the difference: “These kids that never get it ⦠will become difficult in school, they'll never succeed in school; they'll make everybody angry; they'll become delinquents later and eventually they'll become terrorists.”
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One can only imagine the panic and guilt felt by mothers forced to return to work shortly after giving birth.
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The bonding theory, seen as an “all-or-nothing process associated with a sensitive period,”
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soon enough provoked an avalanche of criticism. Starting in the early 1980s, researchers in developmental psychology began to look back at Klaus and Kennell's experiments and drew very different conclusions. The eminent developmental psychologist Michael Lamb found “only weak evidence of temporary
effects of early contacts and no evidence whatsoever of any lasting effects.”
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He pointed to the pediatricians' various methodological errors and concluded that skin-to-skin contact had no obvious influence on maternal behavior. Other studies demonstrated the inconsistency of bonding theory (as distinct from Bowlby's attachment theory). Unlike goats and cows, human mothers showed no evidence of reflexive behavior. Hormones are not enough to make a good mother.
Yet the adherents of naturalismâparticularly those who pride themselves on their “baby-friendliness”
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(as if all others are baby-unfriendly)âcontinue to advocate skin-to-skin contact in the moments immediately after birth to awaken the maternal instinct. This even became one of the conditions set by the World Health Organization for a hospital to earn a “baby-friendly” designation. In France, enthusiasts of the La Leche League remain militant about immediate skin-to-skin contact. Edwige Antier, a politician, author, and pediatrician who dispensed advice for several years on French radio, never missed an opportunity to refer to its necessity. Her many books insist that skin-to-skin contact is one of those “crucial moments” that must not be missed:
Let us leave the mother to cradle her newborn baby in her arms. Having been prepared for birth in body and mind, she is now particularly receptive to the signals given by her child ⦠. The baby sends signals to the mother, and
she alone receives them. The tragedy is that this instinctive understanding, which has been recognized since time immemorial in most cultures, is denied in our own ⦠. [F]rom their arrival in the maternity unit, [mothers] are subject to practices that stifle
maternal instincts.
⦠The interaction between a mother and her newborn baby is a source of wonder, and we pediatricians in maternity units can see how important it is not to separate the child from the mother if she is to receive the subliminal signals sent to her by her baby.
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“Maternal instincts exist, I see them every day,” Antier insists, pointing to “the latest work by biologists and specialist neuroscientists” as proof of their existence. All this is simply asserted; there are no references or citations of explanations or demonstrations. The argument is its own authority. Antier relies on the usual clichés: “From earliest childhood, a woman sees herself destined for motherhood ⦠. And so little girls prepare [for it], from their earliest childhood.”
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It is surprising that this pediatrician, who looks to mother cats as her example and likes to remind us of our mammal natures, did not think to refer to Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's book,
Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection
(1999), deemed masterly by American critics and published in France under the unambiguous title
Les instincts maternels.
Primatology and Anthropology Come to the Rescue of Instincts
As a primatologist, anthropologist, and sociobiologist who sought to break away from the reactionary currents in her field, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy was not unconcerned with feminist issues, which helped account for the book's warm reception by feminist critics. She asks a good many probing questions and gives answers full of subtleties. She is not the first anthropologist to defend the importance of instincts. Thirty years earlier, Margaret Mead, whose culturalist theories are widely established, tended toward the same conclusions. “The cues parents give children and children give parents are built on innate responses ⦠. The infant's gestureâfrail, yet very firmâis a biologically determined way in which the new human being âasks for' recognition ⦠. The adult response contains, in addition to an innate, biological component, all that the adult man or woman has learned about the helplessness, the need and the appeal of infants.”
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Hrdy's ideas are based on a comparison of maternal behavior in rodents and primates, including women, which is largely reflexive in the first group and inconsistent in the second. She begins with the position that maternal responses are the result of the brain's receptivity to hormones. The release of oxytocin encourages feelings of connection, in both rodents and primates, but since primates have a larger and more complex neocortex, which governs the reception of
oxytocin, they display variable reactions. She notes that in many cultures, anthropologists have observed reserved maternal responses among humans during “a period of indifference” among mothers while the woman recovers from the exertion of delivery.” This is confirmed by a study of British first-time mothers: “40 percent ⦠reportedly felt no particular affection for their babies initially.”
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Hrdy does not see this as a challenge to the concept of instinct; she concludes that a mother's strong feelings of attachment to her baby are simply delayed for the days and weeks following birth. Even though women do not display a universal behavior pattern comparable to other mammals; even though some mothers are indifferent or even infanticidal; even though Hrdy recognizes the influence of historical, social, and economic factors, she maintains that none of these considerations invalidate the notion of maternal instinct. To her, the incontrovertible biological basis of mother love is prolactin, the breast-feeding hormone. Breast-feeding, and the closeness it fosters, is the mechanism that forges a powerful link between a mother and her child.
As a follower of Bowlby,
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Hrdy concludes by championing a disturbingly teleological point of view of attachment.
Being attached to one's mother also initiates and then maintains lactation, with the attendant cascade of physiological consequences in the mother, suffusing her body
with a sense of well-being ⦠. As pursed lips clamp tightly onto her nipple and tug ⦠just who is it that is being caught? Within moments, the mother's cortisol levels subside; oxytocin courses through her veins. As if she were getting a massage, the mother's blood pressure drops, oxytocin suffuses her in a beatific calm ⦠. Once nursing begins, bondage is a perfectly good description for the ensuing chain of events. The mother is endocrinologically, sensually and neurologically transformed ⦠. As her mammary glands go into production, it will be a long time before she is again emotionally and physiologically so at liberty to cut bait ⦠. Maternity is inextricably intertwined with sexual sensations, and it is an infant's business, through grunts and coos, touches and smells, to make the most of
Mother Nature's
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reward system, which conditions a woman to make this infant a top priority.
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This hymn to the efficiency of nature leaves several questions unanswered. If breast-feeding is the trigger for maternal attachment, what of those who have never breast-fed, as is the case with millions of mothers? Do they love their children any less than mothers who did breast-feed? And what of those women who breast-feed in the hospital and stop as soon as they leave or a few weeks laterâthe most widespread pattern in many Western countries. If, as a biological side-effect, breast-feeding offers such great
fulfillment, why do so many mothers prefer not to continue the experience, at least until the end of their maternity leave?
In Ãliette Abécassis's novel,
Un heureux événement
, the newly delivered mother explained that to breast-feed you have to “relearn how to be an animal.” There are two types of women, she said: “Those who don't balk at going all the way with motherhood, and those who turn away from it, those who accept being mammals and those who cannot imagine it. There are those who love being animals ⦠, and those who feel disgusted, who do it out of duty or compassion.”
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The heroine belongs to the “breast-feeders” camp. She feels all the pleasure and happiness promised by Hrdy, so much so that she no longer even needs to make love.
Literature and countless personal accounts reinforce this description of motherhood, particularly in an era when women are urged to breast-feed. Thirty years ago, Abécassis's heroine might not even have thought of nursing. Would that have made her any less of a mother? Might she not have been even a very good mother? There are not just two ways of experiencing motherhood but an infinite variety, a fact that should deter us from talking about a biologically determined instinct. A mother's behavior is tightly bound to her own personal and cultural history. No one can deny the intricate relationship between nature and culture, nor the existence of hormones, but the fact that it is impossible to define maternal behavior specific to humans undermines
the very notion of instinct and, with it, the notion of a female “nature.” The environment, social pressures, one's own psychological experience, all seem to have more weight than the feeble voice of “mother nature.” We might regret or celebrate the fact, but in the end the human mother has only the most distant link to her primate cousins.