Turns Out Women Don’t Actually Have a Maternal Instinct
If you’re a lovely young lady who’s already decided she doesn’t ever see herself settling down and popping out a few babies, join the club.
Unfortunately, people who aren’t in this club always seem to have a problem with this, and they refuse to believe that you know what you want to do with your own body. You’ll hear things like, “of course you don’t want kids now, but you will when you’re older,” or “your maternal instinct just hasn’t kicked in yet.”
Well, guess what? The whole maternal instinct thing shares a lot of characteristics with the Easter Bunny in that it’s not real!
Or, science hasn’t ever been able to prove that it’s real, at least.
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In Professor Maria Vicedo-Castello’s book, The Maternal Instinct, she explains that there is absolutely no scientific evidence that supports the idea of a maternal instinct. There’s also no evidence proving that women are more emotional or better at raising children.
So why are women always the ones who are “supposed” to want to raise children? Well, most likely because of nurture, not nature.
Think about it, if you are a woman who doesn’t want kids, you might worry about finding a bae who won’t take issue with that. What does that mean? That men really want kids! Sure, they probably expect you to be the ones to change the diapers, but IRL men seem to be just as baby-hungry as women are stereotyped to be.
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Huffington Post points out if there was a maternal instinct, we wouldn’t be seeing the decline in birth rates that we’ve been seeing since the feminist movement of the ’60s. Essentially, the data shows that once women realized they didn’t have to have kids, more and more chose not to.
In fact, the more educated a woman is, the less likely she is to have kids. You could argue that this is because she’s been busy with work or studying for her MCATs, but it might just be because she has more options and can choose not to do what’s expected of her. Or, she realizes that as a career woman who has kids, she’ll end up doing all the child-rearing work on top of her regular work duties.
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Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with having kids or having the desire to care for little children. But, telling women they’re supposed to have a “maternal instinct” is just as bad as telling women they’re supposed to be natural born sandwich-makers, or telling women they’re not supposed to enjoy casual sex because it’s not lady-like.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole “maternal instinct” B.S. was just pulled out of some douchebag’s ass in history who was worried about smart women coming for his job.
This Mother’s Day, celebrate your ability to do whatever the F you want!
H/T: Huffington Post
