How the myth of maternal instinct perpetuates the myth of the Ideal Mother

Chelsea Conaboy on gender, neuroscience, and reimagining how we talk about new parenthood

In a piece for The New York Times entitled, “Maternal Instinct is a Myth that Men Created,” author of the new book, Mother Brain: How Neurosciences is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood, Chelsea Conaboy (on Twitter here and Instagram here) writes:

The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch, is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one. It was constructed over decades by men selling an image of what a mother should be, diverting our attention from what she actually is and calling it science.

It keeps us from talking about what it really means to become a parent, and it has emboldened policymakers in the United States, generation after generation, to refuse new parents, and especially mothers, the support they need.

I’ve long privately and publicly railed against the notion that because mothers are supposedly “naturally” imbued with softness, gentleness, and an innate capacity for caregiving, we should not only be “naturally” good at care work and domestic labor, but we should enjoy it.

Even before I had specifically targeted maternal instinct as something to be viewed with suspicion if not downright antipathy, as soon as I had my first kid, I knew in my bones that the cultural belief that women are “good” at motherhood (and so should become mothers if they want to be considered “good” people) was a scam.