The Maternal Instinct Is A Myth And We’ve Got The Science To Prove It
“Maternal instinct” pathologizes women who don’t want to have children. But that “maternal drive” is often cultivated through pregnancy itself.
When I hear the term “baby fever,” a certain image comes to mind. A baby—literally having a fever—which finds me in the emergency room in the middle of the night right before the deadline of a career-making article is due.
Another vision of “baby fever” is being vomited all over after my child has drank a large blueberry milkshake. Others involve broken bones, infections, antibiotics and allergic reactions, sleepless nights, and living in the twilight stages of permanent anxiety, while my partner is sound asleep dreaming of solid food intake.
… “baby fever” is basically anything except the desire to have a child.
The concept of motherhood is terrifying to me. Yet, my social media feed is inundated with Twitter post, after Facebook album after Instagram story of people who may have, once upon a time, tried to convince me to participate in a variety of threesomes, but now seem to occupy their time with appeals to the public on the consistency of their kids’ bowel movements, and regularly express the incomprehensible…