NIH-funded researchers are in the early stages of research that documents adult brain activity patterns during childcare scenarios to understand how adults relate to—and care for—infants. This kind of research can help to identify caregivers who might be at risk for mistreating a child. No need to explain how important that could be.
This may not seem like news to you, but the mommy brain is real and is hard-wired for certain nurturing behaviors. Now science is confirming what has been suspected anecdotally. Interestingly, the most recent results suggest that all nurturing mothers—regardless of their country or culture—respond to the cry of a child in a very specific way.
Brain imaging studies of new mothers from eleven countries as disparate as France, Kenya, Japan, and the United States show that when an infant cries, specific areas of the mother’s brain are activated, compelling her to pick up, hold, or talk to the baby. These particular actions make sense when you understand that the areas of the brain that light up are related to movement and speech. It would be interesting to know if the brains of women without children react similarly, especially those in certain age ranges. We know that women of childbearing age, even those without children, are drawn to human “cute characteristics” that trigger nurturing behaviors.
Study design required researchers from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), part of the National Institutes of Health, to observe and record the mother-child interactions of 684 new mothers. They identified whether the mother responded in a nurturing way or was distracted.
Earlier scientific research has already shown that men and women respond differently to childcare scenarios. Again, this is not a shocking revelation, but the source, anecdotally, of a lot of angst and humor in many households. In the earlier study, men and women had different emotional responses to the sound of an infant crying and showed marked differences in terms of attention, as well.
This study design involved researchers asking adult men and women to let their minds wander and then listen to white noise mingled with the sounds of an infant crying. Brain train scans showed that women’s brain activity abruptly switched to an attentive mode when they heard the infant cries, whereas the men’s brains remained in the resting state. (Think of the last time you tried to talk to a man who was in the thrall of television sports.)
For now, take comfort in knowing that if science is demonstrating what aligns with your experience, you are not alone. Women may be hard-wired to take action, but that does not absolve the men or prohibit them for taking action. The behaviors may not be innate, but they can be learned.