There are women who affirm that they decided to become mothers when the maternal instinct knocked on their door, others say they have had that desire forever and some more, who have not felt it, nor will they feel it. Also, there are those who affirm that the true maternal instinct appears as soon as you look at the baby’s face; Although, in reality, that torrent of feelings that the newborn awakens in us would have more to do with the bond and love we feel towards him.
What then is the maternal instinct? The desire to have children? That sixth sense that many mothers claim to detect that their baby needs them? Is it something reserved only for women, or do men also feel something special that leads them to be parents?
The reality is that the experts do not agree on how to define it. In general, the authors assure that if we understand as a maternal instinct the idea that all women want to be mothers, it does not exist; but if, on the contrary, we refer to instinct as the quality to care for the baby without previous experience, we are right. The debate is served.
Printed in the genes?
The psychologist Natalia Valverde, from the Calma Center in Madrid, Spain, explains that “for some students of the subject, having children is the biological goal par excellence of women and where they find their maximum fulfillment. However, others think that the desire to have children is given to us by society ”. For example, the renowned French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, mother of three children, stated since 1981 that “unlike animals, humans do not have a maternal instinct and that this is a cultural mandate.”
Israeli sociologist Orna Donath has sparked heated debate on social media with her book Mothers Repent. Orna, 41, fed up with being told that she will regret not having had children, has stated that “the maternal instinct does not exist and that there is strong social pressure to be a mother.” The sociologist affirms that “the feeling of protection that we develop for a baby does not have to be equivalent to the maternal instinct and that, in any case, if it existed it would not be something exclusive to women, since the proof is in gay couples who adopt children”.
Dr. Ersilia González Carrasco, a neonatologist pediatrician at the Severo Ochoa Hospital in Spain, also believes that the role of biology is indisputable, “since we are, after all, animals with reproductive roles for the survival of the species.” For her part, Mar Escarpa, head of midwives at the same hospital, adds that “in women, this instinct is a response biologically conditioned by beliefs, culture and society. Therefore, more and more women see the fact of becoming mothers as a choice and not as something unquestionable within their lives ”.
Between both arguments, the biological and the cultural, the specialist Natalia Valverde believes that both sides are the two sides of the same coin: “on the one hand, there is our instinct to procreate, women come to the world prepared to become pregnant and Every month, from menarche to menopause, menstruation reminds us of this. On the other hand, there is no doubt, the social pressure is there and it seems that the message is that if you do not have children, you are not normal and something happens to you… ”
A unique link?
The other meaning of instinct would be the one that understands it as a bond and that has to do with what the English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called “primary maternal concern”, which is an emotional state in which the recent mother does nothing but think in your baby. In addition, a special sensitivity appears to him to detect what is happening to him and thus be able to calm him and give him what he needs (“It is incredible, I wake up seconds before my little one cries! It seems that he had a sixth sense”, many mothers say) . Everything arises spontaneously, without prior preparation.
“This usually happens this way most of the time, but it may be that the mother does not feel a special bond with the newborn or perceives that she does not understand it – explains Natalia Valverde-. Although normally, over time, she gets to know her son and loves him more and more ”. The expert also believes that the maternal instinct would, in reality, have more to do with the bond and the feeling of protection towards children than with the desire to be a mother: “the mother-son (or father-son) bond is an instinct biological that guarantees the survival and protection of the species. It is unconscious. It is not provoked, but occurs. In fact, emotional ties are crucial to a baby’s development because they empower parents to care about their care. “
Perhaps, for this reason, rivers of ink have been written about the importance of strengthening this bond from gestation (talking to the baby still in gestation, playing music, caressing the tummy …), above all, not detaching from the newborn from the same moment when it reaches the world. The French gynecologist Michel Odent, known for promoting the need for mother and child to do skin-to-skin treatment already in the operating room, assures that this practice greatly favors the bond and also helps to initiate lactation.
Biological creation?
In all this attachment process, in which the mother and the baby fall in love with each other day by day, hormones also play a very important role. The work carried out by a group of Functional Neuroanatomy (NeuroFun) of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Jaime I University of Castellón, in Spain, concluded that hormones such as placental lactogens and prolactin generate some changes in mental function during the gestation stage, causing increased motivation to protect, feed and care for children.
Dr. Fermina Liza Román Alameda, in her blog Perinatal Psychology states that “what we knew before as a maternal instinct, today we know that it is nothing other than hormonal release, with oxytocin or the popularly called” love hormone “being the protagonist of the maternal feelings and qualities necessary to defend and preserve the life of the newborn baby. Estrogen and cortisol also play a role in attachment links.”