A brand new study published in the Science journal, “Pregnancy Programs the Brain for Mothering”, has found that female brains undergo significant rewiring during pregnancy that drives maternal instincts. Previously, it was believed that the onset of maternal behaviors was primarily triggered by hormones released during and after childbirth.
According to the study, pregnancy hormones, such as estrogen and progesterone, are instrumental in initiating these changes via a hormone called galanin produced in the hypothalamus in the central brain. This observation indicates that hormonal changes occurring during pregnancy play a pivotal role in instinctual maternal behavior.
The researchers observed enhanced maternal behaviors in female mice during late pregnancy. Interestingly, exposure to pups was not a prerequisite for the development of these behaviors. It originates internally.
This is why children should never be removed for any significant time from their mother (unless, of course, she endangers the child).
This is also why the mother, as the primary bond who is primed physically and emotionally to nurture and protect her child from before birth, should automatically maintain primary custody after divorce. And, because the attachment process is critical during infancy and toddler years, especially while breastfeeding, children should not be away from their mother more than a few hours.
This scientific reality should inform custody rulings.
Society has been, and is still being, conditioned to believe fathers make just as good of mothers as mothers, they are the same when it comes to parenting. Unfortunately, for the sake of “equality”, feminists agreed, for a time anyway. This nonsense needs to finally be dispelled.
During “women’s lib” back in the ‘60’s, feminists downplayed the differences between males and females in the pursuit of equality. They were portrayed for the most part as interchangeable. Boys and girls were the same—it was only culture that made them different. Fathers and mothers were the same—it was only culture that caused women to be primary caregivers.
Equality was (and still is often) conflated with sameness.
After millions of years of evolution selecting for maternal behaviors in females that result in the successful rearing of children, mothers and fathers cannot all of a sudden be deemed the same because politically or socially expedient.
“Equality” in the home fit the feminist goal of getting men to take on half of the child care and domestic labor so women could work outside the home and not have to shoulder all the domestic stuff too. And by taking this equality stance, feminists believed it would help in getting workplace equality.
It didn’t.
But it did backfire in the home where men still do not take on anywhere near half the domestic or child rearing labor during an intact marriage but now have (unscientific) justification for taking children from mothers after divorce.
Source: “Baby Brain”: Pregnancy Programs the Brain for Mothering & Attachment