There are few areas in parenting more fraught with anxiety than feeding children. But a new study suggests that if your child is a picky eater, it may be largely geneticrather than a result of your terrible parenting. For parents with children who avoid their greens, this may come as a relief.
Even though a study like this won’t help me persuade my kids to eat more vegetables, I can’t get enough of good scientific reports when it comes to issues surrounding motherhood, parenting, and childhood. They can be a soothing compress in a world of febrile ideology and myth—and with a long history of mother-blaming.
When I set up motherhoodI was surprised by the prevalence of unscientific advice, misinformation, even quackery: from conflicting prenatal messages about using pain relief during labor, to falsehoods about breastfeeding. I was amazed at how unproven some of the information was – often the data simply wasn’t there. There is very little research on the transition to motherhood, and ideology often fills the vacuum.
Leading child rearing books are often filled with opinions presented as fact. And the amount of conflicting advice about parenting is perhaps greater than it has ever been. There is a strong focus on the behavior and choices of the individual parent – often the mother in early years – with little or no consideration of the role of the father or partner or family, wider society or government policy. To say nothing of the way the actual health and well-being of the new mother is often ignored.
Thank goodness for those who use scientific methods to find out what is really what.
Take the mother brain. Before my kids were born, all I knew was that “mommy brain” supposedly meant forgetfulness or some kind of neural sludge. But in early motherhood, aside from periods of intense sleep deprivation, my brain didn’t feel slower, just different. In fact, in some ways it felt faster and more open.
The clichéd concept of “mommy/baby brain” has its roots in the 19th century idea that women were intellectually impaired by their ability to bear children, and this obviously flawed thinking has continued into the present day. But now a series of studies – the most recent showing a detailed map of the human brain during pregnancy led by Emily Jacobs at the University of California, Santa Barbara – is putting the simplistic idea to bed while giving new parents much-needed information. In short: the brain during pregnancy and new parenthood undergoes a remarkable and complex metamorphosis that Jacobs and her colleagues suggest is a kind of “fine-tuning” in preparation for parenthood. To suggest it is “baby brain” or a cognitive impairment is reductive and wrong.
Crucially, this work could lead to much-needed insight into postnatal depression, pre-eclampsia and other health problems. And now that we finally have the neuroscience that shows both the complex changes and extensive impact of pregnancy and new motherhood on the brain, perhaps we can build a society that cares for caregivers – for example by ensuring social support to reduce stress during this crucial time.
Even if science won’t change social policy overnight, it can and does have the power to change the emotional and social day-to-day experience of parenting.
New mothers often blame themselves for struggling within the conditions of late-stage capitalism and its rosy maternal ideals. Since I wrote my book Mattress review – named after the anthropological term for the entire period of transition to motherhood – and as I heard from hundreds of new parents, I saw how common and corrosive shame is and how it causes people to internalize their problems. This prevents people from connecting with each other, or asking for help. I have also seen how the emerging science of mattress review can offer liberation and relief by helping people make sense of how they feel.
For example, I thought that the nuclear family structure was somehow “natural” and that there was something wrong with me because I found long days alone with a new baby difficult. The freedom and autonomy I benefited from in my privileged life was not being able to hold the baby while I fed myself or used the toilet.
As I tried to understand why modern motherhood seemed so difficult for myself and the people around me, I found the science of evolutionary anthropology to be life-changing. I didn’t realize that the way we raise children in the global north – in nuclear units – is completely different from 95% of our evolutionary history, when we lived mainly in small groups.
Our brains and our nervous systems evolved in societies organized around collective child rearing. I learned from the legendary Sarah Blaffer Hrdy that a solitary glutton simply would not be able to make the provision 10m to 13m calories a human child will have to eat before it can find food independently; they needed help, and got it from their immediate community. I realized that the way my society designed modern motherhood was actually very strange.
Knowing that we live in what researchers call an “evolutionary mismatch” can alleviate some of the shame and guilt surrounding high societal maternal ideals. And other data is also soothing. Learn, for example, that mothers spend twice as much time looking after their children every day compared to the 1960s, while also working more, may explain how the structures of care in our economic environment lead to stress, rather than it being a moral failing.
The lifting of shame may sound like a trivial, individual matter, but perhaps scientific understanding in this context will be a path to a change in material and economic conditions. Shame is disconnecting, and can lead to withdrawal, loneliness and poor health. But scientists can help illuminate the reality of the caregiving experience, which is hidden in the private sphere. Remove the obstacle and power is released (maybe that’s the point of the obstacle?).
Social and cultural norms are hard to see. But myths can be harmful. And science helps us see more clearly that our societies fail to meaningfully support or acknowledge those child-rearing – and that maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad if my kids only like peas.
