Your book completely changed my career path when I read it during my pregnancy. It was a hard message to hear as a woman with a large career, but you confirmed many of the instincts I had about motherhood. Your book also helped me understand why I felt so viscerally repulsed by the idea of putting my child into institutional care. We just made it to three years old last month and I'm starting to lean in a little more at work, but I'll never regret spending the first three years of my son's life 90% focused on him.
Thank you for this post. My experience presenting our empirical and theoretical research on our species' evolved nest to Global North audiences resonates with yours. (Global South people nod their heads when they hear about the science supporting their nurturing of babies with presence, breastfeeding, in-arms care, multiple nurturers, etc..) Professional women of high income nations in particular seem not to want to hear that nurturing babies matters that much, even though the evidence is substantive. But then, mothers feel put on the spot to do what they are unable to do in family-unfriendly USA. Still, everyone needs to know that our species evolved to raise children cooperatively, not in isolation with mother or mother and father. See our little films, essays, podcasts, videos at nonprofit, https://EvolvedNest.org.
Darcia, I first heard about you from Gabor Maté and so I’m delighted to see you here! Both you and Komisar, and a handful of neuroscientists I read, are doing wonderful work. So thank you. I have a 2.5 year old and didn’t sleep train her after reading your piece on it in PT. Again, thank you for using your research to highlight and stand up for the human rights of babies.
I am a liberal health care provider (and former early childcare provider). I completely resonate with your message, which I also don’t see as political but it is. It’s disregarded by the left and hijacked by the right. I am pregnant with my first and will be staying (mostly) home with him besides working a few hours a week where my husband will care for him. It’s a sacrifice and a privilege to be able to do so, and I’m grateful we are in a position to be able to do so, even if we have to go without on a lot of things for a while. And I wish we were better supported by policy as women birthing the next generation.
I loved reading this, thank you. It makes me so mad to talk about the actual science of children's biological needs being met with such resistance. I was raised, but I am not religious. I stay home with my two young children because I feel that it is what is right for them. I've had to have many arguments with my husband to be able to keep doing this, and I have also been overwhelmingly told by him and others that I am selfish for not wanting to help financially support my family. There is still so much work to be done in the middle ground of promoting the real need of mothers away from the Christian view. That it is not anti-feminist or only a religious thing to do but that is biologically what is best for the children. Reading this made me think of all the times we are meant to say 'fed' is best and should no longer talk about the benefits of breastfeeding in case we upset someone who isn't. Providing financial assistance to mothers who stay at home with their young children, I feel, is the first step in valuing their role in this capitalist society.
I'll never forget coming across this article in the WSJ. It introduced me to your work and subsequently changed my life! I cried big tears that someone was finally acknowledging what I felt in my intuition from the beginning: that my babies needed me and that I was doing something truly important (not important in a syrupy, church-y sense) as I cared for them day in and day out, despite feeling like a failure as an ambitious woman.
I think so many women in the global north close their ears to this message because, as a society, we have built a world where two incomes are very often necessary - and there has been a huge growth in the number of single parents who have to work. When we feel helpless, we feel anxious - and this manifests either in furious denial of the problem, or the kind of mental health issues which are so prevalent now. Something has to change - and thank you, Erica, for highlighting this. I see the consequences of outsourced parenting in my practice all the time - and the benefits of being there in my own adult children. We can do it all - just not all at once.
Your book is revolutionary. I was a radical leftist (and journalist) for over a decade. Then I started interviewing neuroscientists on the link between infant neglect and addiction. (In short, reliable maternal affection helps build an *adaptive* response to stress and the oxytocin system: two things we need to stave off addiction—an affliction that piggybacks off the “love and attachment reward centres” of the brain.) And as I narrowed in on this topic, my editors sort of .. just stopped responding. I could not get anything that discussed this published. In one instance, the mere mention of it got me scolded by a (female) editor for “aiding conservatives,” which I absolutely did not consider myself as. (I’d been a Democracy Now!-watching, anti-war, anti-corporate, Occupy Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren-, Noam Chomsky-, Howard Zinn- loving activist.)
It’s so odd: The Left and progressives in general are supposed to be globally-minded, anti-colonial, and PRO-science. We have decades of quality, cutting-edge neuroscience research and rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, alongside technological advances in neuroimaging and hefty meta-analysis to show that maternal affection, presence, and responsiveness is a biological, evolutionary process that unquestionably grows the baby’s brain architecture toward adaptive mechanisms. It’s undeniable. This is also how Indigenous populations parented before colonialism, and how cultures around the world parent. So how is this NOT a leftist issue? I was entirely baffled by this reaction from progressives.
Until I understood this:
Feminism is the Trojan Horse of the (actual) patriarchy, and it convinced women to not only abandon, but ridicule, what should have been the true feminism: our nurturing side. I mean, look at society and tell me all the wishes of men (well, the sociopathic ones) haven’t come true: they no longer have to provide, protect, or even commit.
I’d love to watch the Steinheim types who deride and ridicule the gravely important work of mothering sit face-to-face with hunter gatherer societies and tell the women they’re being lazy or anti-feminist for not hunting/acting like men.) All the coming-of-age or teen movies have a familiar plot line: the comely nerdy girl, after getting belittled by the populars, starts dressing and acting like them to try to gain their approval. We, the witty viewers, shout, “Don’t conform girl! You’re awesome as you are!!”
But somehow, second wave feminists and the generations of women following in lockstep don’t see that this is exactly what they’ve advised women to do. “Act like a man to get his respect!” Abandon the extreme value of who you really are.
To give them their due, certainly some feminists are right in one regard: some men started to belittle the feminine nature of women. Others, the value of women entirely.
Possibly due to a lack of physiological understanding after seeing the behavior that resulted from the significant brain changes in mothers, some men insisted “Welp, they’re crazy” (or hysterical, or “fussy”, etc.)
What they don’t (or can’t) see is that when women become pregnant, the brain’s very architectural design and internal connectivity are all recalibrated; a neural overhaul to equip a new mother with some nearly superhuman abilities: the precision to distinguish her own child among a sea of faces; an enhanced auditory sense to detect the softest of whimpers; the unparalleled capacity to empathize with her newborn, comprehending their needs and emotions based solely on non-verbal cues; increased threat sensitivity/risk aversion etc.
In turn, rather than stand up for our darn selves, feminists told us that male traits, values, behaviors, etc MUST be more valuable and therefore we should start acting like them and shun the women who don’t.
Imagine instead, feminists stood up for the feminine. Imagine we actually grew the matriarchy. Imagine we insisted on explaining the value of the softness of new mothers; the strength of a woman bearing, birthing, and feeding children; the important brain and limbic system-building work their focused affection does for children? Why not stand up for the awe-inducing value that these superhuman qualities bring to society.
I truly believe that if the corporate-lefty, Emily Oster types weren’t celebrated and rewarded *only* for their credentials and academic work, but were instead cheered by society (and paid handsomely) for their mothering, then they wouldn’t virtue signal how much they love their work more than being with their kids. (Effectively denigrating mothers’ work to all who’ll listen.) We have over 50 years of neuroscience research showing that maternal affection builds resilient brains—into adulthood. And still, the feminists tell us not to be there for our infants, not to “pick up” or “spoil” our children, and not to celebrate motherhood in any way other than hailing the working mother.
Why don’t we all come to agree on the value that sensitive and present mothers bring to humanity, so that policy can follow—as you suggest in your book—to finally support mothers. I love your idea of providing mothers a stipend to stay home for the 0-3 years. That, in effect, forces them *back into the workforce* once their important work is done—while also recognizing as a society the extreme value of mothers.
But we need society to agree on the importance of these first three years. I believe that what we *already know* is enough for funding and the political will to do this. But it needs to be shouted from the rooftops:
The science shows this:
Consistent mother-infant co-regulation is critical for building proper brain architecture during the first three years, a time when 1 million neural connections are being built per second. The academic literature illustrates how the warm, prompt, and reliable response of a mother to her baby’s cries builds stress resiliency by activating and strengthening the oxytocin system. This system—a “cascade” of oxytocin followed by dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and GABA—is critical for mental wellness and recovery from external stressors. It's essential to bring babies back down to physiological homeostasis, where mitochondria and telomeres are no longer being damaged. The above type of maternal presence wires neurons toward an adaptive response to stress for life. We don’t have the brain parts to “self-soothe” during these 0-3 years: Babies need the voice, eye contact, smell, skin, etc of a loving mother (or parent) to wire the oxytocin system. Not having their mothers around for these vulnerable first months and years, in effect, stunts healthy brain and limbic system development. We know babies breathe better, pump blood better, and sleep better when held and soothed by their mothers once stressed.
There is also ample research literature showing how the opposite of this—a negative or delayed response to cries—wires neurons toward stress reactivity into adulthood. This is rife in *most* daycare centers where the mother is absent and one person is responsible for soothing 4 (or more!) crying infants: it's not possible to the degree developing brains need, as shown in the research. A baby whose stress response is activated (say, because they don't know where their mom is) and then prolonged, due to a lack of presence to their cries, releases a “cortisol cascade” of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and glutamate. When left unsoothed, the developing brain builds toward hyper-reactivity to stressors. The cortisol cascade in the infant’s brain and body becomes overwhelming for the infant when they’re not physically close to their mothers. This can lead to poor development of our nervous system (ie. the channels between the limbic system and neocortex under-communicate) and the aforementioned stress reactivity, which is intrinsically harder to bring back to baseline. This type of poor brain development is rife in our culture of separating babies from their mothers—through daycare and sleep training, way too early.
This is no longer than your original post, so I’ll end here. With a huge thank you for using your voice. Keep going.
Yes yes yes! This is everything I know about this subject (both intellectually and deep in my instinctive bones) beautifully summed up in a single post! Thank you for taking the time to write this.
Signed, a former journalist currently dedicating her time to her babies, ages three to ten months.
I'm sorry to direct this at you. I'm just sick of hearing boomers telling me I'm doing it wrong because 'when my kids were young I just did x, y, z..'. It was a different time and that time is not coming back. It's not your fault, it's not ours. Children do deserve better.
Erica, all the supportive comments above could have been written by me. However, society is simply not set up in a way that facilitates the sort of parenting you describe. Being up all hours with my first daughter pushed me to the brink. And now you're telling me that I should only be away from my 1 year old for 1 hour at a time!! That is barely enough time to make a meal and eat it, let alone recover from a year of chronic sleep deprivation.
You're telling me that we must go down to one income - the mental health of our children is at stake - but now we have no retirement fund and no means of helping our children get on the housing ladder. Poverty is also extremely damaging for children.
You admitted in an interview that you would take your 3 children to the park WITH a nanny! Can your own children afford that kind of lifestyle? SAHM and a nanny (and probably a cleaner and access to door-dash)?
I'm no scientist. Perhaps that is what it takes to be a good parent, but with this sort of messaging I am not surprised that my generation (i'm 30) are choosing to abstain.
Hi there! Thanks for your feedback. In interviews, broader work, and my book, I am always the first to say that not everyone can do what I did, and what I did was not easy. I made many sacrifices personally and professionally to raise my children in the way that I wanted to. Luckily, I had a supportive husband and a broader community around me that included a babysitter/nanny ( no cleaners in this castle, though!).
However, whenever I discuss the science around parenting, I view it as an Overton window. I know not everyone can be at home from years 0 to 3. However, how can we get as close to that as possible using attachment parenting principles? How do we choose childcare and separate and reattach to our children in the moments when we have no choice but to?
I hope you follow along and engage with my broader work to experience those too!
Your book completely changed my career path when I read it during my pregnancy. It was a hard message to hear as a woman with a large career, but you confirmed many of the instincts I had about motherhood. Your book also helped me understand why I felt so viscerally repulsed by the idea of putting my child into institutional care. We just made it to three years old last month and I'm starting to lean in a little more at work, but I'll never regret spending the first three years of my son's life 90% focused on him.
Thank you for this post. My experience presenting our empirical and theoretical research on our species' evolved nest to Global North audiences resonates with yours. (Global South people nod their heads when they hear about the science supporting their nurturing of babies with presence, breastfeeding, in-arms care, multiple nurturers, etc..) Professional women of high income nations in particular seem not to want to hear that nurturing babies matters that much, even though the evidence is substantive. But then, mothers feel put on the spot to do what they are unable to do in family-unfriendly USA. Still, everyone needs to know that our species evolved to raise children cooperatively, not in isolation with mother or mother and father. See our little films, essays, podcasts, videos at nonprofit, https://EvolvedNest.org.
Darcia, I first heard about you from Gabor Maté and so I’m delighted to see you here! Both you and Komisar, and a handful of neuroscientists I read, are doing wonderful work. So thank you. I have a 2.5 year old and didn’t sleep train her after reading your piece on it in PT. Again, thank you for using your research to highlight and stand up for the human rights of babies.
I am a liberal health care provider (and former early childcare provider). I completely resonate with your message, which I also don’t see as political but it is. It’s disregarded by the left and hijacked by the right. I am pregnant with my first and will be staying (mostly) home with him besides working a few hours a week where my husband will care for him. It’s a sacrifice and a privilege to be able to do so, and I’m grateful we are in a position to be able to do so, even if we have to go without on a lot of things for a while. And I wish we were better supported by policy as women birthing the next generation.
I loved reading this, thank you. It makes me so mad to talk about the actual science of children's biological needs being met with such resistance. I was raised, but I am not religious. I stay home with my two young children because I feel that it is what is right for them. I've had to have many arguments with my husband to be able to keep doing this, and I have also been overwhelmingly told by him and others that I am selfish for not wanting to help financially support my family. There is still so much work to be done in the middle ground of promoting the real need of mothers away from the Christian view. That it is not anti-feminist or only a religious thing to do but that is biologically what is best for the children. Reading this made me think of all the times we are meant to say 'fed' is best and should no longer talk about the benefits of breastfeeding in case we upset someone who isn't. Providing financial assistance to mothers who stay at home with their young children, I feel, is the first step in valuing their role in this capitalist society.
I'll never forget coming across this article in the WSJ. It introduced me to your work and subsequently changed my life! I cried big tears that someone was finally acknowledging what I felt in my intuition from the beginning: that my babies needed me and that I was doing something truly important (not important in a syrupy, church-y sense) as I cared for them day in and day out, despite feeling like a failure as an ambitious woman.
I still am prioritizing motherhood. My 3 children are college, high school and middle school aged.
I think so many women in the global north close their ears to this message because, as a society, we have built a world where two incomes are very often necessary - and there has been a huge growth in the number of single parents who have to work. When we feel helpless, we feel anxious - and this manifests either in furious denial of the problem, or the kind of mental health issues which are so prevalent now. Something has to change - and thank you, Erica, for highlighting this. I see the consequences of outsourced parenting in my practice all the time - and the benefits of being there in my own adult children. We can do it all - just not all at once.
Your book is revolutionary. I was a radical leftist (and journalist) for over a decade. Then I started interviewing neuroscientists on the link between infant neglect and addiction. (In short, reliable maternal affection helps build an *adaptive* response to stress and the oxytocin system: two things we need to stave off addiction—an affliction that piggybacks off the “love and attachment reward centres” of the brain.) And as I narrowed in on this topic, my editors sort of .. just stopped responding. I could not get anything that discussed this published. In one instance, the mere mention of it got me scolded by a (female) editor for “aiding conservatives,” which I absolutely did not consider myself as. (I’d been a Democracy Now!-watching, anti-war, anti-corporate, Occupy Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren-, Noam Chomsky-, Howard Zinn- loving activist.)
It’s so odd: The Left and progressives in general are supposed to be globally-minded, anti-colonial, and PRO-science. We have decades of quality, cutting-edge neuroscience research and rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, alongside technological advances in neuroimaging and hefty meta-analysis to show that maternal affection, presence, and responsiveness is a biological, evolutionary process that unquestionably grows the baby’s brain architecture toward adaptive mechanisms. It’s undeniable. This is also how Indigenous populations parented before colonialism, and how cultures around the world parent. So how is this NOT a leftist issue? I was entirely baffled by this reaction from progressives.
Until I understood this:
Feminism is the Trojan Horse of the (actual) patriarchy, and it convinced women to not only abandon, but ridicule, what should have been the true feminism: our nurturing side. I mean, look at society and tell me all the wishes of men (well, the sociopathic ones) haven’t come true: they no longer have to provide, protect, or even commit.
I’d love to watch the Steinheim types who deride and ridicule the gravely important work of mothering sit face-to-face with hunter gatherer societies and tell the women they’re being lazy or anti-feminist for not hunting/acting like men.) All the coming-of-age or teen movies have a familiar plot line: the comely nerdy girl, after getting belittled by the populars, starts dressing and acting like them to try to gain their approval. We, the witty viewers, shout, “Don’t conform girl! You’re awesome as you are!!”
But somehow, second wave feminists and the generations of women following in lockstep don’t see that this is exactly what they’ve advised women to do. “Act like a man to get his respect!” Abandon the extreme value of who you really are.
To give them their due, certainly some feminists are right in one regard: some men started to belittle the feminine nature of women. Others, the value of women entirely.
Possibly due to a lack of physiological understanding after seeing the behavior that resulted from the significant brain changes in mothers, some men insisted “Welp, they’re crazy” (or hysterical, or “fussy”, etc.)
What they don’t (or can’t) see is that when women become pregnant, the brain’s very architectural design and internal connectivity are all recalibrated; a neural overhaul to equip a new mother with some nearly superhuman abilities: the precision to distinguish her own child among a sea of faces; an enhanced auditory sense to detect the softest of whimpers; the unparalleled capacity to empathize with her newborn, comprehending their needs and emotions based solely on non-verbal cues; increased threat sensitivity/risk aversion etc.
In turn, rather than stand up for our darn selves, feminists told us that male traits, values, behaviors, etc MUST be more valuable and therefore we should start acting like them and shun the women who don’t.
Imagine instead, feminists stood up for the feminine. Imagine we actually grew the matriarchy. Imagine we insisted on explaining the value of the softness of new mothers; the strength of a woman bearing, birthing, and feeding children; the important brain and limbic system-building work their focused affection does for children? Why not stand up for the awe-inducing value that these superhuman qualities bring to society.
I truly believe that if the corporate-lefty, Emily Oster types weren’t celebrated and rewarded *only* for their credentials and academic work, but were instead cheered by society (and paid handsomely) for their mothering, then they wouldn’t virtue signal how much they love their work more than being with their kids. (Effectively denigrating mothers’ work to all who’ll listen.) We have over 50 years of neuroscience research showing that maternal affection builds resilient brains—into adulthood. And still, the feminists tell us not to be there for our infants, not to “pick up” or “spoil” our children, and not to celebrate motherhood in any way other than hailing the working mother.
Why don’t we all come to agree on the value that sensitive and present mothers bring to humanity, so that policy can follow—as you suggest in your book—to finally support mothers. I love your idea of providing mothers a stipend to stay home for the 0-3 years. That, in effect, forces them *back into the workforce* once their important work is done—while also recognizing as a society the extreme value of mothers.
But we need society to agree on the importance of these first three years. I believe that what we *already know* is enough for funding and the political will to do this. But it needs to be shouted from the rooftops:
The science shows this:
Consistent mother-infant co-regulation is critical for building proper brain architecture during the first three years, a time when 1 million neural connections are being built per second. The academic literature illustrates how the warm, prompt, and reliable response of a mother to her baby’s cries builds stress resiliency by activating and strengthening the oxytocin system. This system—a “cascade” of oxytocin followed by dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and GABA—is critical for mental wellness and recovery from external stressors. It's essential to bring babies back down to physiological homeostasis, where mitochondria and telomeres are no longer being damaged. The above type of maternal presence wires neurons toward an adaptive response to stress for life. We don’t have the brain parts to “self-soothe” during these 0-3 years: Babies need the voice, eye contact, smell, skin, etc of a loving mother (or parent) to wire the oxytocin system. Not having their mothers around for these vulnerable first months and years, in effect, stunts healthy brain and limbic system development. We know babies breathe better, pump blood better, and sleep better when held and soothed by their mothers once stressed.
There is also ample research literature showing how the opposite of this—a negative or delayed response to cries—wires neurons toward stress reactivity into adulthood. This is rife in *most* daycare centers where the mother is absent and one person is responsible for soothing 4 (or more!) crying infants: it's not possible to the degree developing brains need, as shown in the research. A baby whose stress response is activated (say, because they don't know where their mom is) and then prolonged, due to a lack of presence to their cries, releases a “cortisol cascade” of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and glutamate. When left unsoothed, the developing brain builds toward hyper-reactivity to stressors. The cortisol cascade in the infant’s brain and body becomes overwhelming for the infant when they’re not physically close to their mothers. This can lead to poor development of our nervous system (ie. the channels between the limbic system and neocortex under-communicate) and the aforementioned stress reactivity, which is intrinsically harder to bring back to baseline. This type of poor brain development is rife in our culture of separating babies from their mothers—through daycare and sleep training, way too early.
This is no longer than your original post, so I’ll end here. With a huge thank you for using your voice. Keep going.
*now longer
Yes yes yes! This is everything I know about this subject (both intellectually and deep in my instinctive bones) beautifully summed up in a single post! Thank you for taking the time to write this.
Signed, a former journalist currently dedicating her time to her babies, ages three to ten months.
I'm sorry to direct this at you. I'm just sick of hearing boomers telling me I'm doing it wrong because 'when my kids were young I just did x, y, z..'. It was a different time and that time is not coming back. It's not your fault, it's not ours. Children do deserve better.
Erica, all the supportive comments above could have been written by me. However, society is simply not set up in a way that facilitates the sort of parenting you describe. Being up all hours with my first daughter pushed me to the brink. And now you're telling me that I should only be away from my 1 year old for 1 hour at a time!! That is barely enough time to make a meal and eat it, let alone recover from a year of chronic sleep deprivation.
You're telling me that we must go down to one income - the mental health of our children is at stake - but now we have no retirement fund and no means of helping our children get on the housing ladder. Poverty is also extremely damaging for children.
You admitted in an interview that you would take your 3 children to the park WITH a nanny! Can your own children afford that kind of lifestyle? SAHM and a nanny (and probably a cleaner and access to door-dash)?
I'm no scientist. Perhaps that is what it takes to be a good parent, but with this sort of messaging I am not surprised that my generation (i'm 30) are choosing to abstain.
Hi there! Thanks for your feedback. In interviews, broader work, and my book, I am always the first to say that not everyone can do what I did, and what I did was not easy. I made many sacrifices personally and professionally to raise my children in the way that I wanted to. Luckily, I had a supportive husband and a broader community around me that included a babysitter/nanny ( no cleaners in this castle, though!).
However, whenever I discuss the science around parenting, I view it as an Overton window. I know not everyone can be at home from years 0 to 3. However, how can we get as close to that as possible using attachment parenting principles? How do we choose childcare and separate and reattach to our children in the moments when we have no choice but to?
I hope you follow along and engage with my broader work to experience those too!