Maternal Instinct

[BlackCat]

What is this specifically? I haven't been able to pin down a decent scientific definition, although pop culture is rife with its own ideas. Why maternal? Why not paternal? Surely fathers care about their offspring, too? (Note: I'm focusing on humans.)

The reason I'm wondering is because it seems like the human species probably evolved with "parental instinct," but our (western) culture only likes to think of women as those who care about their offspring, or to get mystical, that women have some sort of mysterious connection that men don't.

Is this just social stereotyping, or do mothers really care more than fathers, or do women have mystical instincts?

BlackCat

[Dogdoctor]

There really is a documented difference between mothers and fathers relationships with their offspring, but maternal instinct as it is commonly used is to describe the feeling that a mother has for her child. I will try to find more info though perhaps Mercutio could tell us off the top of his head what the differences are.

[Roboramma]

Cool questions. I think it's likely that mothers and fathers both care about their offspring (even obvious that they do), but that they care differently.

Throughout the natural world mothers tend to invest more in the care of their offspring. The main reason is the basic fact that the different sexes are different evolutionary strategies. The female sex is defined by the fact that it creates an egg, which is then fertilized by the male. This egg is more than just DNA, though. It also had the nutrients needed for the development of the organism until it can survive on it's own.
That initial investment by the female is greater than the initial investment by the male, and as such, she has more riding on the survival of that particular offspring.

So if there is an environment in which only slightly greater investment is required to keep the offspring alive, it is more likely that the payoff for that investment relative to it's cost will be greater for the female parent than the male.

Mammals have taken that increasing parental investment very far, in that the female nurtures the young in it's body until it is fully developed (well, not fully, but you know, they are born live). This represents a substantial investment not only in resources, but also in time. They can't get pregnant again until after they've given birth. For humans that's nine months that further reproduction is stopped in order to nurture one child.
After birth, there is lactation. This is also a serious investment. One could well ask, why is it that mothers rather than fathers lactate?
It's entirely possible that it could have evolved the other way, so why didn't it? The reason is simple - the mothers already have a greater amount invested in the offspring's survival. Basically father and mother compete with each other to give as little as possible to the child while still ensuring that the child has the best chance for survival. Since the mother has a greater investment in that child, the game is unevenly weighted toward he investing more.

Lactation represents more than just an investment of a significant amount of nutrients, but again, it represents an investment of time - by giving so much to it's current offspring, the female is unlikely to have enough to go through pregnancy again, and so there are physiological mechanisms to prevent pregnancy during lactation. This investment in time in the environment in which we evolved represents a few years. (because soft foods for early weaning were less available, lactation tended to last longer than in agricultural societies).

All this means that mothers have a disproportionately large investment in each individual child. Suggesting that they should care about the outcome for each individual offspring more than fathers.
On the other hand, in humans fathers have quite a large investment as well. Paternal care is a very important part of long term survival and reproductive success in humans. This makes sense because while the mother has a lot invested, she can only invest so much. When she "can't make ends meet" it is in the father's interest to help her. Better to make that investment, when she can't, or in ways in which he is more efficient at it (for instance by teaching the skills that he has), than to let the child starve. It's only "all things being equal" that maternal investment should outweigh paternal investment.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Certainly fathers care about their children, very deeply. In humans far more than in many other animals, I imagine, because paternal care has been so important in our evolution. But paternal care is certainly different from maternal care, and as such paternal instinct is also very likely to be different from the maternal instinct.

edited for spelling

[Dogdoctor]

If you look up maternal bond and paternal bond there is a little there about the differences

[Kaylee]

Oxytocin is the hormone that helps us bond, and is released during labor and nursing.

About a year ago I read a book on neuroscience but I don't recall the title or author. Hmmm, that's not very helpful is it.

I just popped in "oxytocin hormone released during labor nursing"
in the google search engine and a bunch of web sites confirming this came up. I don't recognize any of the web site names, but I do believe that this is an actual fact.

[Dogdoctor]

Fathers tend to distance themselves from their children in the infancy stage and become interested in their children as they become older and more functional. This is also seen in all countries and in non human primates. Women when shown pictures of babies tend to show pupilary dilation regardless of their marital status or reproductive status. Men only showed pupilary dilation if they were fathers. This indicates that perhaps men need to learn to love kids and women naturally tend to love all kids. There are probably other differences but there is clearly a difference between women and men in their relationships with kids.

[BlackCat]

Fathers tend to distance themselves from their children in the infancy stage and become interested in their children as they become older and more functional. This is also seen in all countries and in non human primates. Women when shown pictures of babies tend to show pupilary dilation regardless of their marital status or reproductive status. Men only showed pupilary dilation if they were fathers. This indicates that perhaps men need to learn to love kids and women naturally tend to love all kids. There are probably other differences but there is clearly a difference between women and men in their relationships with kids.
Do you have a study on this? I'm not demanding proof, I'm just curious because I want to read it myself.

This is close to what I wanted to talk about. Why is there a difference? Just because the mother has put in more energy? I have to admit, I am not a mother, but I don't really care for children, either. It could be related to a number of things, including little exposure to children, and finding babies incredibly boring. When I read that fathers become interested in children later, I thought that that sounded like me. See, my sister-in-law has adopted two children, who are now toddlers, and they're cute, but they're boring. I keep thinking of when they get older, I can teach them to be skeptical (I know, high hopes), teach them science, and show them things that I'm interested in. As they are now, I don't feel much about them, because they're self-centered, and haven't learned empathy yet.

These things make me start wondering, am I an anomaly? Or did I just get socialized differently? I guess that's why I'm trying to get the truth about maternal instinct, because I don't have "it."

BlackCat

[Dogdoctor]

That was from a book which does have scientific footnotes so I will look up the references when I get a chance. It is all about averages and there are wide ranges of behaviors among both sexes so don't feel too unusual since there are likely many who feel the same as you.

[This Guy]

At the risk of convincing everyone I was a bad step-father, I'll state that for me at least, there is a hard to explain, but different feeling toward my step son, and my own children.

Not that I love my step son less. He was around several years before my first son was born, and I think we bonded, and had what at the time, I would have considered to be the same feelings that a father and son would have. His real father didn't claim him as his, and I tried to be his father. Until he was old enough to understand, he didn't know otherwise.

But when my first child came, there was a different feeling toward him. I can't even explain it. Wasn't that I loved him more, I just felt different about him.

I won't say it's a paternal bond, but if I had to bet.....;)

[Jeremy]

can't even explain it. Wasn't that I loved him more, I just felt different about him.

There is no reason to censor your emotions. You do "love" your genetic children more, they are your biological purpose. Your step child is worth social standing to you, and your kind treatment of him certainly helped you father children of your own, but he is not your progeny.

[bluess]

Hmmm .... Weighing in as a recent mother-by-adoption of a 6-year-old (and I have no biological children):

1. Prior to deciding that I wanted a child, I was generally not interested in infants and didn't communicate well with children under 12.

2. I still don't generally get gushy over infants or toddlers, even those related to me.

3. I have become very good at relating to 4 years-old and up.

4. Both my husband and I have developed all sorts of new perceptual skills focused on the small fry. He is much better at determining her emotional state; I am much better at figuring out how she got there once I know what that state is.

5. Both of us have become much better at identifying the status of other children - practice making perfect, I think.

6. Try to hurt her, and my first impulse would be to try to kill you. Ditto on the husband's side.

I think that the investment of resources results in emotional connection regardless of when that investment occurred. I think that the bulk of 'maternal' versus 'paternal' instinct is a social construct. Your own persona and background will likely color your parental instinct.

Edited for dopey grammar mistake.

[tracer]

There is no reason to censor your emotions. You do "love" your genetic children more, they are your biological purpose. Your step child is worth social standing to you, and your kind treatment of him certainly helped you father children of your own, but he is not your progeny.
Ah, but from a memetic point of view, a man's stepson is every bit as much a product of the man as his natural-born son would be. Assuming you get the stepson while he's still young enough.

[Roboramma]

I think that the investment of resources results in emotional connection regardless of when that investment occurred. I think that the bulk of 'maternal' versus 'paternal' instinct is a social construct. Your own persona and background will likely color your parental instinct.

I completely agree that these things vary with the individual. One thing that kin selection suggests is that siblings should care for each other's children. Given that in the environment in which we evolved, any infant that you were likely to have thrust upon you that was not your own would probably be from a close relative, it's not surprising that we would be able to bond to other people's children, just not (usually) as strongly as we would to our own. Also, even if that were not the case, adoption, for instance, certainly takes over many of the bonding aparatus that evolved for parenting.

But the argument concerning "investment of resources" was an evolutionary argument. That is, in stating it, I was trying to suggest that the emotions themselves evolved because of (rather than are triggered in any individual by) that greater amount of investment.
Evolution can often be seen as a conflict between individuals. The conflict that I was trying to talk about is that between mother and father. Not specifically individual mothers and fathers, but mothers and fathers on an evolutionary time scale.

It's not that investing more resources makes you care more - though that may be the case.
What I'm saying is that because the situation is unequal between father and mother, the father cannot be pressured as much to give. Again, I'm talking about evolutionary timescales here.
Basically, when it comes to reproductive success, the female, who has already invested a lot in an individual child, loses more than the male if that child dies. So she has more to gain by investing more still (including emotionally - which is nature's way of ensuring that you stay invested). There is an amount of investment that is favoured by evolution - those who give less will have less reproductive success, and those who give more than it will also have less reproductive success, than those who give that amount.
It's just that that favoured amount is greater for females than males becauase they have a greater initial investment.

We can see evidence for this all throughout the animal kingdom. There are exeptions, but they prove the rule, because in those cases the males tend to have made a greater intitial investment.

Human fathers do, though, give quite a bit to their young. There is a paternal instinct. One of the reasons is that our young require a great deal of parental investment, and mothers simply aren't able to give it all. It's just that the ideal amount for fathers is less than mothers. I don't think it's all that much less, though. And while the emotional investment may be qualititatively different, it may be just as intense.

None of this should be taken to refer to individuals, however. There will be some women who have no interest in even having children, and some men who devote their lives to fatherhood with greater intensity than many mothers. What I'm talking about is a tendancy based on strategies that have led to greater reproductive success for our ancestors. And while I think it very likey that these things are strongly influenced by the genes, nurture probably has a meaningful role to play as well.
Your milage may vary.

[bluess]

I completely agree that these things vary with the individual. One thing that kin selection suggests is that siblings should care for each other's children. Given that in the environment in which we evolved, any infant that you were likely to have thrust upon you that was not your own would probably be from a close relative, it's not surprising that we would be able to bond to other people's children, just not (usually) as strongly as we would to our own. Also, even if that were not the case, adoption, for instance, certainly takes over many of the bonding aparatus that evolved for parenting.

But the argument concerning "investment of resources" was an evolutionary argument. That is, in stating it, I was trying to suggest that the emotions themselves evolved because of (rather than are triggered in any individual by) that greater amount of investment.
Evolution can often be seen as a conflict between individuals. The conflict that I was trying to talk about is that between mother and father. Not specifically individual mothers and fathers, but mothers and fathers on an evolutionary time scale.

It's not that investing more resources makes you care more - though that may be the case.
What I'm saying is that because the situation is unequal between father and mother, the father cannot be pressured as much to give. Again, I'm talking about evolutionary timescales here.
Basically, when it comes to reproductive success, the female, who has already invested a lot in an individual child, loses more than the male if that child dies. So she has more to gain by investing more still (including emotionally - which is nature's way of ensuring that you stay invested). There is an amount of investment that is favoured by evolution - those who give less will have less reproductive success, and those who give more than it will also have less reproductive success, than those who give that amount.
It's just that that favoured amount is greater for females than males becauase they have a greater initial investment.

We can see evidence for this all throughout the animal kingdom. There are exeptions, but they prove the rule, because in those cases the males tend to have made a greater intitial investment.

Human fathers do, though, give quite a bit to their young. There is a paternal instinct. One of the reasons is that our young require a great deal of parental investment, and mothers simply aren't able to give it all. It's just that the ideal amount for fathers is less than mothers. I don't think it's all that much less, though. And while the emotional investment may be qualititatively different, it may be just as intense.

None of this should be taken to refer to individuals, however. There will be some women who have no interest in even having children, and some men who devote their lives to fatherhood with greater intensity than many mothers. What I'm talking about is a tendancy based on strategies that have led to greater reproductive success for our ancestors. And while I think it very likey that these things are strongly influenced by the genes, nurture probably has a meaningful role to play as well.
Your milage may vary.

Gotcha. I would agree.

[Dogdoctor]

Do you have a study on this? I'm not demanding proof, I'm just curious because I want to read it myself.
Hmmm well I am glad you asked me this question. Reading the references for this section I am not so sure what to think of this book now. The book is titled "The Science of Love" by Anthony Walsh PhD. The references given include:
Sydney Mellen, The Evolution of Love (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman 1983), p.133

R. LaRosa and M. LaRosa, Transition to Parenthood (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981).

T. Weisner, "Sibling Interdependence and Child Caretaking: A Cross Cultural View," in Sibling Relationships: Their Nature and Significance Across the Lifespan, ed. M Lamg and B Sutton-Smith (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1984)

Stephen Suomi, "Sibling Relationships in Nonhuman Primates" in Sibling Relationships: The Nature and Significance Across the Lifespan.

Glenn Wilson, Love and Instinct (New York: Quill, 1981), pp 103-104

Now these may be scientifically sound references yet they mostly they aren't scientific studies. Being I haven't the time to go look up all these since they are out of my field of expertise I will view this book more skeptically.

[This Guy]

There is no reason to censor your emotions. You do "love" your genetic children more, they are your biological purpose. Your step child is worth social standing to you, and your kind treatment of him certainly helped you father children of your own, but he is not your progeny.

Certainly won't argue the point.

But all I can truly say is that it was a different feeling.

Love has always been a hard to define emotion for me. I think I'm related to Spock(Star Trek, not the baby doctor;-), only he didn't inherit the brains from my side of the family ;)