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Parenting today is virtually synonymous with worry. We want to ensure that our children are healthy, that they get a good education, and that they grow up to be able to cope with the challenges of modern life. In our anxiety, we are keenly aware of our inability to know what is best for our children. When should we toilet train? What is the best way to encourage a fussy child to eat? How should we protect our children from disease and injury? Before the nineteenth century, maternal instinct-a mother's \"natural know-how\"-was considered the only tool necessary for effective childrearing. Over the past two hundred years, however, science has entered the realm of motherhood in increasingly significant ways. InPerfect Motherhood,Rima D. Apple shows how the growing belief that mothers need to be savvy about the latest scientific directives has shifted the role of expert away from the mother and toward the professional establishment. Apple, however, argues that most women today are finding ways to negotiate among the abundance of scientific recommendations, their own knowledge, and the reality of their daily lives.

In this provocative new book, renowned educator and philosopher Nel Noddings extends her influential work on the ethics of care toward a compelling objective—global peace and justice. She asks: If we celebrate the success of women becoming more like men in professional life, should we not simultaneously hope that men become more like women—in caring for others, rejecting violence, and valuing the work of caring both publicly and personally? Drawing on current work on evolution, and bringing concrete examples from women’s lived experience to make a strong case for her position, Noddings answers this question by locating one source of morality in maternal instinct. She traces the development of the maternal instinct to natural caring and ethical caring, offering a preliminary sketch of what a care-driven concept of justice might look like. Finally, to advance the cause of caring, peace, and women’s advancement, Noddings urges women to abandon institutional, patriarchal religion and to seek their own paths to spirituality.

Investigated genetic explanations for perceived gender differences in nurturance, a gender intensified prescriptive trait, compared to other gendered traits. Based on a nationally representative telephone survey of Black and White Americans (N=1200), we found perceived gender differences in nurturance were more often attributed to genetics than perceived gender differences math ability or violence. Men were more likely than women to use genetics to explain perceived gender differences in nurturance, but not math or violence. Finally, respondents viewed perceived gender differences as more strongly genetic than individual differences for nurturance, but not math and violence, suggesting such beliefs have ideological roots. We discuss the potential of genetic explanations to reinforce stereotypes and to justify the social hierarchy. Adapted from the source document.

In the films of the Alien franchise featuring Sigourney Weaver, Ripley's maternal instinct is an integral part of who she is as both survivor and protector—and as a destroyer, too. In Alien, Ripley's misplaced maternal instincts save her from the death‐by‐alien that is the fate of her crew mates as she hurries off in search of the ship's resident cat, Jones. When Ripley hears Jonesy's meow, she responds like a mother to a crying baby. Ridley Scott's Alien begins with an image of near‐naked bodies in capsules, awakening from sleep, slightly dazed, slightly confused—intimating birth, or rebirth. In her theory, Stone harks back to the approach of psychoanalysis, claiming that each experience of motherhood repeats the mother's own infantile past and her own traumatic separation from the maternal body. In Alien: Resurrection, Ripley is reclaimed through a purposeful symbiosis of mother and child; human and alien; self and “other”.

This chapter examines how plays in the 1890s and the first few decades of the twentieth century engaged with the idea of gender essentialism: whether motherhood was the true calling for women, whether the bond with the infant was inevitable and instinctive, whether woman's evolutionary role was to select the superior mate for the continued improvement of the species. Henrik Ibsen made such questions about women's changing roles central to his plays, and other playwrights followed suit in a range of works that address the issue of motherhood and maternal instinct in ways that self-consciously relate to, and often directly challenge, the scientific discourse on this subject. This chapter also considers Charles Darwin's views about motherly love; the foregrounding of infants on stage and of the simultaneously “primitive” and “natural” act of breast-feeding in James A. Herne's Margaret Fleming; the practice of using babies on stage; and theater's exploration of the question of what a baby actually is, and who “owns” it.

Alisha Jansky is the long-suffering [Sarah], unless she's the manipulative Sarah, or the sensitive Sarah. You get the point. Rena Baskin makes a little too much out of her superior yet wholly supportive sibling role. Elise Manning is terrific as Terry, the homeless woman who can utter only one word, but the ongoing value of her character is questionable. Were [BAUER] to buck up and force [Lillian] and Sarah to talk and respond to one another, some of the nebulous discoveries that Terry prompts in the other three characters could be replaced by meatier dialogue. Loann West's set splits its attention between Sarah and Lillian's all-tapestried-out home and a park bench in the Boston Public Garden. Lighting designer P.J. Strachman delicately deposits pools of illumination upon the action. There's nothing particularly Boston- ish about \"The Maternal Instinct\" other than the script's ability to refer to Sarah and Lillian as married. Not a Boston accent to be had, not a particular college to be named, even though Lillian is clearly employed by one.

Infant cries evoke powerful responses in parents 1 – 4 . Whether parental animals are intrinsically sensitive to neonatal vocalizations, or instead learn about vocal cues for parenting responses is unclear. In mice, pup-naive virgin females do not recognize the meaning of pup distress calls, but retrieve isolated pups to the nest after having been co-housed with a mother and litter 5 – 9 . Distress calls are variable, and require co-caring virgin mice to generalize across calls for reliable retrieval 10 , 11 . Here we show that the onset of maternal behaviour in mice results from interactions between intrinsic mechanisms and experience-dependent plasticity in the auditory cortex. In maternal females, calls with inter-syllable intervals (ISIs) from 75 to 375 milliseconds elicited pup retrieval, and cortical responses were generalized across these ISIs. By contrast, naive virgins were neuronally and behaviourally sensitized to the most common (‘prototypical’) ISIs. Inhibitory and excitatory neural responses were initially mismatched in the cortex of naive mice, with untuned inhibition and overly narrow excitation. During co-housing experiments, excitatory responses broadened to represent a wider range of ISIs, whereas inhibitory tuning sharpened to form a perceptual boundary. We presented synthetic calls during co-housing and observed that neurobehavioural responses adjusted to match these statistics, a process that required cortical activity and the hypothalamic oxytocin system. Neuroplastic mechanisms therefore build on an intrinsic sensitivity in the mouse auditory cortex, and enable rapid plasticity for reliable parenting behaviour. The onset of maternal behaviour in mice involves an interaction between intrinsic tuning of auditory cortical neurons and experience-dependent plasticity.

Maternal sleep health is crucial for maternal wellbeing, particularly maternal mental health which has implications for the wellbeing of children, families and whānau. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Well Child Tamariki Ora (WCTO) service provides a unique opportunity to support mothers, their families, and whānau by providing education on sleep health for both mothers and children. However, there is a need for a deeper understanding of mothers' experiences with WCTO and the sleep information they receive to enhance these services. This primary research used data gathered from the Wāhi Kōrero online story-sharing platform, with 181 stories focusing specifically on sleep. Using thematic analysis, three key themes were identified: maternal instinct as a guide in navigating child sleep practices, promoting strength-based rather than deficit-focused approaches, and the necessity to move beyond rigid, monocultural service models. Findings underscore the importance of tailoring maternal and child health services to better meet the needs and perspectives of mothers, their families, and whānau, particularly in the areas of sleep and maternal mental health. Implications of findings for future policy and practice are discussed, including developing strength-based, culturally responsive approaches within services like WCTO, and adapting policy to support more flexible, whānau-centred models of care. Glossary of Kupu Māori words: Aotearoa: Māori name of New Zealand; hapū: pregnant; kaupapa Māori: Māori ideology - a philosophical doctrine, incorporating the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values of Māori society; kōrero: to tell, say, speak, read, talk, address; Māori: Indigenous people of Aotearoa-NZ; Pākehā: New Zealander of European descent; Kāhui Rangahau: expert advisory group; wāhine: female, women; whānau: family or closely connected kin group