Mother Love and Human Nature

The three of us in 2006

In college in the 80s, I studied psychology and sociology, and at that time everyone knew that the biological view of human nature was bunk—racist, sexist, reductionist bunk. Thirty years ago, that outlook seemed reasonable, but now it turns out that the biological view has a lot to tell us about ourselves. It’s embarrassing that I was so wrong about human nature, but I have come to embrace the biological view. The biological view says that each person is unique, that variety is built into the human genome, that the brain evolved for behavioral flexibility, and that we humans are the most behaviorally flexible of all animals. The biggest benefit of biological thinking is that it makes better sense of the human experience than the blank-slate view that I learned in college. As a personal example, I submit the love that my late wife had for our daughter. The biological view affirms that mother love is a core component of human nature, while the blank-slate view portrays it as more like victimhood. 

Nothing that a biologist says about human mothers represents anything essentially true about humans as a group or as individuals. Biology is too messy to be essentialist. Nor can biology tell any individual that they must be a mother or should be a mother. When conservatives say that women should stay home and be mothers because it’s natural, that’s not biology talking. Considering the biology of human motherhood doesn’t oppress anyone. It’s the blank-slate view that minimizes the lived experience of most mothers.    

My wife had a hard life, but being a mother to our child brought her joy and a sense of purpose. Her love for our child came from deep within her being. Our daughter, for her part, was more than a passive subject of conditioning. She responded to her mother’s love with complementary instinctive behaviors, completing a positive feedback loop of mother-child communication and bonding. In the 80s studying sociology and psychology, I learned that a mother’s love for her child was something that had been trained into her by the culture’s gender role system. It didn’t spring from deep within and in fact was a tool that the patriarchy used to keep women down. My wife’s love was a conditioned response, they’d say, like thinking of pink as a “girl” color. Love like my wife’s, I was taught, merely feels as though it springs from deep within. That’s what I learned, but biology knows better. In reality, humans make the best mothers on the planet, bar none. Our mammal lineage has been developing mother-and-child instincts for hundreds of millions of years. As mammals go, we apes are exceptionally good mothers, and as apes go we humans are tops. The love my wife felt for our daughter really did spring from deep within her.

The blank-slate view tells women that their deep maternal feelings are actually shallow. The biological view says that a mother’s love for her children is the real deal, a profound element of the human experience.