A lot of African subsistence farmers don’t really plough, the soil is just hoed and women frequently do it all (certainly the case in Bantu areas of South Africa).
But men do do all the cattle herding, usually.
I have heard (No cite available, sorry) that the concept of “maternal instinct” is a fairly modern invention, and it wasn’t mothers that invented it.
Who invented maternal instinct? Fathers?
Plenty of women say that they never felt any strong attachment for their children (and often feel guilty as a result : “what kind of mother am I?”). So, I’m not convinced that the “maternal instinct” is an actual instinct.
Regarding the OP : in a society were there’s no contraception and no abortion, one shouldn’t assume that the infanticide will be conducted against the will of the mother, as many posters seem to do. She might very well approve it.
Also, there was the situation of unwed mothers. Given the very strong social stigma attached until quite recently, this would also result in infanticides.
It still does, there’s a few cases every year, generally by exposure. Often, a young girl who was too freaked out to know she could ask for help and where.
Dude, this is the GQ. Its not “I reckon”, You presume a fuck ton in the above post.
You presume that the whole “move away to husband’s house” has been the norm for societies throughout history. In reality it really hasn’t. Firstly, by move to husbands house, for most of history has meant “moving literally yards away to the next hut”, or at least “in house in the same tiny hamlet”. You would still see your daughter everyday, she’ll still work your fields and be there when you need her. Secondly, many places it was normal and expected for a newlywed man to live with his wife’s family; especially true when there were no sons/wife’s brothers were very young; I recall reading during the late Roman Empire, one way to avoid conscription for younger sons, was to marry them off to a woman with no or young brothers.
The tropes you describe only took hold when mass transportation made living far away easy.
Yeah, well I do think the whole “attachment” issue many times is the women having an unrealistic idea of what maternal love is, doubtless brought upon by the saccharine and extremely gushingly effusive way its portrayed in the media.
I seem to remember some Pope who published a Papal Bull which said in essence “Fornication is going to damn your soul a lot less than throwing the newborn into the Tiber; please stop doing that, starting now”!
I’ll go with a firm nope on this.
In our support group for parents of babies or children who had died, lots of parents were there for infants who had died before actually being born, were still born or like ours died very shortly after being born.
It does not “generally” take time to bond or fall in love with one’s child.
I think people were less vocal about it, but I can’t see how it would be something that one “accepts” without feelings. Then or now.
Again, I disagree.
It really depends on the individual and the circumstances. After our first child died, the my wife lost the second pregnancy and it was hard. Much harder than the loss of her forth pregnancy which came after we had our first surviving child.
However, I really had a difficult time seeing how a person voluntarily flips a switch and turns off an attachment to an infant.
I think that people made less of a display of their emotions, but I had a hard time seeing how they would actually have fewer emotions.
We lost our son while we were living in Japan, and other than us, the members of the group were all Japanese. Most of the people were under a lot of pressure to be stoic and not display their emotions. However, the raw pain there was testimony to the depths of the emotions.
A number of the husbands, normally gentle Japanese guys got into fights out in public, and one of the counselors said that is a typical way guys can show emotions.
By the way, TokyoBayer I did not know that you had lost a child until this thread; I am really sorry, has to be the worst feeling in the world.
Hang on here. This *is *still in GQ, although it probably shouldn’t be.
“Maternal instinct” has nothing to do with bonding. “Maternal instinct” means that a mom just knows how to be a mom and has a unique insight based on unconscious cognition of some sort. It’s often completely bogus, and often used to defend irrational decision making on the part of mothers.
“Bonding” is the formation of preferential social associations, and it’s based, depending on species, on placental hormonal shift, smell, and postnatal hormonal shifts caused by touch based stimulus like nursing and cuddling. “Bonding” isn’t terribly fuzzy or opinion based. It’s a thing that happens in all species that require parental care in infancy. It’s well studied, it’s not always gender specific, and humans are not the only animals that experience it.
Here’s one study, of many, on the science of maternal bonding: Mother–infant bonding and the evolution of mammalian social relationships
Are there outliers, of every species, who don’t form parental bonds with their individual offspring? Of course. But if you have a successful species that doesn’t form parental bonds with their offspring as a rule, then you’ve got yourself a species that doesn’t require postnatal care, like sea turtles.
I do think it’s important to be honest with people that there’s not always love immediately after birth. There’s a dangerous myth that says you’re going to fall head over heels in love with your baby the moment he’s born, and too many new mothers who don’t feel that and think there’s something wrong with them. Love sometimes takes time to take effect, and that’s okay and normal. But if bonding - which is not the same as love - doesn’t begin to happen within the first hours after a birth, that’s an indication that we need to watch that dyad closely for dysfunction, and keep an eye on the mother for postpartum depression or psychosis.
Of course. There are always going to be people who don’t form strong attachments at or after birth. There are always going to situations that are so dire that a parent cannot keep their offspring alive. There are always going to be individuals who don’t form bonds with their infants ever.
But, again, to compare it to the closest thing we have today - infant adoption - we know it’s not generally an easy decision, nor is it an entirely intellectual one. We can give up an infant for adoption with full knowledge that this is the best course of action, and it’s still quite often difficult to actually do it. Bonding is not an intellectual or voluntary process. It’s an animal process, and we’re still, and have always been, animals.
The OP wants to know why infanticide happens when mothers bond with their infants. And the best answer is: because people sometimes have to make decisions that override our animal urges.
It’s not a matter of accepting without feelings. What I think Little Nemo is talking about is the difference right now between losing a child and losing an 80 year parent. You will grieve either way, but on some level, you expected the parent to die pretty soon and on some level , you always expected to outlive your parent. No one expects to outlive their child, no matter when the loss occurs. It seems to be a disruption of the natural order of life- and that’s the part that becomes different when 1 out of 3 children die young. There will be grief , yes, but more similar than to the grief one feels after the loss of a parent. Not the utter devastation that comes with losing a child now - it is not uncommon to hear people say " I will never be happy again" years after losing a child, while I never hear that said about the death of a parent.
Given how many types of animal mothers will kill, or allow to die, their offspring I question if that’s really “overriding” our “animal urges”. Death of offspring is common in the animal kingdom, for a variety for reasons including such “economic” ones as the parents being unable to get enough food to support all of a litter. If anything, infanticide seems a very old process and humans finding a way around the need for it is the new thing,
I’ll accept that.
I was trying to find a way to word it without using the word “instinct” in the biological sense, so as not to confuse the issue with “maternal instinct” in the social sense. But you’re right. Allowing or causing the death of an infant is definitely part of the animal world.
Let me try again:
The OP wants to know why infanticide happens when mothers bond with their infants. And the best answer is: because people sometimes have to make decisions that override our bonding tendencies.
Better?
Let’s see… Who expected the wife to move in with the husband and leave her family?
China?
Pakistan?
Zulu?
India?
The Ojibway and the Lakota, for example, don’t seem to have had a marriage ceremony - the woman just moved in with the man if it was OK with her father (the price was right,too).
Inca:
Polynesia -
Even Tibet, where a woman could have multiple husbands - this was so that several brothers shared the same wife and so the brothers’ farm was not subdivided - implying the woman lived in the household of her husbands.
And so on…
Of course, in this varied world with myriad customs, there are a number of matrilinean societies; the Cherokee, for example:
And you do have a valid point that the daughter often may be only a short distance from her family; however, in many cases, the resources were the husband’s - completely or also, or shared among his extended family, complicating support for her parents.
Thanks. I think society is much better off now that medicine has helped reduce infant mortality. The emotional costs to the parents is indeed enormous.
Protip: Numbing pain with alcohol isn’t as good of an idea as it seems at the time.
Again, I disagree.
I’ve read accounts of my Mormon ancestors who lost babies, and the pain they felt was very real. Even ones who lost three out of 12 babies. Accounts of others who lost babies were also quite poignant.
In the past, there was very strong social pressure to keep the grief internal. That has changed now, which IMHO, is more healthy because bottling up the pain often leads to much worse consequences. See protip above.
The emotional bonds between parents and children are enormous. Stories after stories after stories tell of how surprised people are with the attachment they have toward their offspring.
I think there is a tendency to believe that modern people are somehow different than those of the past, but I don’t buy it.
I also have a really hard believing that even though some people don’t feel a bond or an emotional attachment immediately that they would be less sensitive to losing the child. Both my wife and I felt a much stronger, immediate bond with our first son because we knew that he would be with us for only a few hours.
My older sister gave up a child for adoption and says that now more than 25 years later, she still gets depressed around that time of the year.
md2000, did you seriously (except Incas) think modern day countries and societies still operate on the same principal as societies hundreds of years ago?
True.
[QUOTE=Man who also lost a child]
“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty look, repeats his words,
Remembers me of his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form”
[/QUOTE]
Famine can change things significantly.
A new baby has little chance of survival and faces a long lingering death from starvation. It’s also consuming food that the other family members desperately need to survive.
What can be done? Give it away? To who? Everyone in the village is starving. They can’t endanger their own family by feeding another person’s kid.
It’s a horrible choice. I can easily understand infanticide in primitive cultures.
Real famine is something most cultures today don’t face. There are exceptions in a few places. But at least there is a possibility of aid from outside. That option didn’t exist in ancient times. The crops fail? You and everyone you know starves.
I don’t think anyone has said that there was no pain involved- and I know I certainly didn’t. And 27 years after I had a stillbirth I still get depressed at that time of year. But I suspect ( although neither you nor I can possibly know) that losing a child in a time and place where 1 in 3 children die young is a different experience than losing a child in a time and place where few children die young. Just like losing a child is a different experience from losing a parent and losing a parent when you are 8 is almost certainly a different experience than losing a parent when you are 50
I think that’s a large part, along with the lack of sources for 95% of the Population for most of history - no diaries from the common farmer from 1500 or 1000 AD on how he felt putting his newest Baby outside to die because it was another Girl again, or how the mother felt.
When we do have testimonies, they all seem to Show that despite death being common, People still grieved hard- they just probably didn’t Show it. (The common example I know of is Martin Luther, who wrote a Poem about losing one of his babies).
We also know, both from what’s recorded, and mostly, what we see now, that People are able to “rationalize” practises which are harmful if presented as Tradition. The battle against FGM in those regions where it’s still practised is very hard, even though today, we have Access to Information on how harmful it is, and Statements from clergy that Religion does not demand it - and yet People, esp. mothers and grandmothers, are convinced they have to Keep doing it because otherwise their daughters will be outcast. Going as far as traveling from Europe to the old Country during School Holidays to do it.
And in the case of high dowries (as India still today) or scarce resources, the proof that this works is even visible without education. Better to kill the child quickly than let it slowly hunger to death; better to put it outside in the Hands of the Gods, instead of making a decision you are to blame for. Coping mechanisms.