.. >> i am the new door program

coordinator here at the library first i would like to think our sponsor graham now gives me great pleasure to announce the introduction of abigail inside the new science of our ancient maternal instinct aor journalist and young mother and best-selling author and a graduate of harvard college her new title just published by simon & schuster over the psychology motherhood. and with abigail tucker personal experience to have a delightful if everybody could put in the q&a we will go over them and welcome. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you to everybody

joining us tonight interested in all sorts of subjects but especially fascinated by the science of domestic life and what you might call the mystery of the familiar. my first book called the line in the living room and the changes that underwent that ultimately help conquer the world my new book talks about for starters that they key physical characteristics that scientist actually take the time and trouble to study this is called the baby release or the scientific literature may include big guys a snub nose

to pass accidental but a striking resemblance is likely one reason they were able to take over the world without giving humanity too much in return you could almost say that by so strikingly resembling human babies they are praying on our maternal instincts the other thing is to under have those changes over those 10000 years as they became domesticated which help them lose their fear of humans and run rip shot over us. my new book is about brain change that m more rapid happening and mothers over ten months instead over 10000 years but that could be a story for another time if you

take pigeon pictures of women's brains before and after pregnancy they don't look the same there are changes of gray matter in volume related to social processing one lab that could identify those that b been pregnant these changes seem to bepe permanent they may also be cumulative these changes are likely common from antelopes to zebras alongside the universality there are many ways each human mother has no to mom brains look exactly alike the physical brain change that scientist still try to understand that we call maternal instinct that sensitization and a desire to respond it is an awakening and

a renaissance and often chemically incentivized of pregnancy and birth and lactation but it doesn't have to be it is the most profound mental change barring a traumatic brain injury. brains are plastic and changing and moldable considered a distinct phase of development although little bit like adolescence growing numbers around the world are interested in this new field and have all types of high tech tools they would love to get their hands on. wire mom so interesting for scientist to study? one reason is the anatomy of the maternal brain is shared across so the instinct is a

common thread of all kinds of speciesls scientists hypothesize that maternal circuitry supplies the raw material for uniquely human social phenomenon like romantic love all truism language and music and obsessive-compulsive disorder and their other to figure out what is going on with the motherec globally 90 percent of women become a 80 percent of mothers by the time we reach our mid- forties to so but as the mother of four young children myself also interested in the scientific field and i guess

you could say selfish reasons. becoming a mother you can gain 60 pounds practically overnight and then grow straight here after sipping curly for 30 years. even with him mom body and dad body in that psychological magnification. but we will not go there tonight. the interior aspect of the maternal transformation are more striking than what is going on on the outside. the brain is in the first organ that comes to mind when you think about childbirth but itey is a key player. my dream differently than i used to? and wire my daughter's day versus casting why doau the

babies cry ceiling care tearing my brain apart? are there limits to this love? want to confront the downside in my really getting stupider or am i just tired? also the maternal mental health to consider which impacts us in the months we know. with a concrete nature how mental health proliferate at the time of birth. postpartum depression affects one out of five women but yet we still don't know what causes this disease. abscess of compulsive disorder 10 percent of the mothers and are also more likely to crop up after the birth of the first child so it's not all sunshine and daisy rattles so

for people tote understand the maternal brain and the science of the domestic life and the complexities when i started to read them on literature the gadgets like high-powered microscopes and a notice that many tools used to monitoring experiments is just junk from around my house. these researchers are like popcorn kernels cereal marshmallows family photo albums and endless plastic toys. and how scientists deploy and the pantries and closets and playrooms to get at the bottom of what is happening in my brain. but first one other mom science tool you should know

about and when i don't have in my house is rodents but i do have a pet hamster. because ofus maternal instincts we can use animal models like lab rats and mice to get center on school. i visited the labab at new york university to see how his students female rats really do not like babies and of that junk food of the materials lists is rats and mice treats and supersweet stuff babies are not so sweet to their mom on the other hand a female mouse will run away from the sound of mouse babies crying

with the best case scenario sometimes female rats will attack the babies and even kill them. but just from the time a pregnant rat gives birth for the first time a change takes place inside of her. a new mother rat will press a bar an infinite number of times it can be any old baby not just pups from her litter in an early experiment one mother right pass the bar 700 times in four hours and did not stop until the scientist in charge threw up his hands and ended the experiment will also choose puffs over cocaine and cause an electric grid to the babies they once ran away from.

and sounds eerily familiar to many mothers have a similar experience in the hospital after giving birth. how pregnancy and birth and lactation can have this behavioral change to kick off the process from at least any human brain scan for instance releasing oxytocin the hormone associate with labor and delivery and social bonding into the brains of virgin mice to hadd not gotten pregnant yet over the course of three hours they were able to watch the individual brain cells become responding more sharply to the sound so the person's brain acted more like mother's brain and now if you put them in a cage with a baby is likely

they would not run away but perform maternal behaviors but it's more thann the release of a single neurotransmitter in real life lots of other chemicals beyond oxytocin are also involved lake estrogen and dopamine in ways that scientist still try to understand. is not all clinical timing either. you could also read birth and engineer without any hormones at all so also studying how virgin mice can become maternal if you baby mice wanted to supervise. given enough exposure once hostile female response to the

path one —- to the path and that it is gaining new specters the maternal instinct can be seen in every brain that was meant to grow and this may be what naturally happens with adoptive mother's. scientist are alsots pretty sure so-called the medial area the steve down part of the brain has lots of sensory information from your ears and nose and reward the motivation hotspots in the brain this is how we know it's important new mother rats are so motivated you can render them unable to see or hear or taste and will still continue to care for

their pups but if you disable that area of their brain the moms period retrieving so similarities down circuitry is involved in the human mom process but likely for you and me we are not allowed to dissect human mom brains and that's not the same as giant terry rats. and those with extra layers. so to study humans it is a different set of tools noninvasive imaging tools like mri moving around inside there's goals which concludes which parts are in play and then also which measure electricalme readings as the neurons fire in mass that eeg path is not something had lying around my house that to

volunteer in the third trimester ofhi my pregnancy that was one of the things i did before the pandemic scientist expose human women and mothers and non- mothers to stimulate baby cries and faces and what happens next. that moms responded to me than other people that baby faces are here baby cries and then to have slightly different parts of the brain as well and

then to a stronger reactions and then we seem to be more responsive to pleasure pain. of course there are some major differences into those as far as we know all babies are created equal to the rodent mom but to the human mom or another animal especially herde animals like sheep and have offspring in chaotic communities and not in undergroundd burrows would be responsive we need to tell the kids a part in addition to becoming sensitized the human mother recognized by sight and smell and sound very quickly this happens almost instantaneously and scientist have a tough time mixing up

rfperfume tricked with perfume what they have the sent memorized. it may take a day or two but it happens in one leading experiment scientist noted that when an in a crowded maternity ward within 48 hours to wait for the sound of their babies cry only and then to sleep through the sound of the other babies. and in the lab and different patterns to hear the babies voice. >> scientists call this a maternal weakening and in responsiveness on —- awakening and responsiveness. inside our brain is likely changing the way because the appearance so that different zones it is the start of our

universe way better than circuits that are things going on human moms as well so late pregnancy and new motherhood like many mammals undergo a deafening and the stress responses and we stayed cool and collected like real-life earthquakes after a big one in california scientist contacted the pregnant subject and reported less stress than other people and in the lab to still produce as many stress hormones as other people do if you stick your hands in i.c.e. water. this natural dampening helps mom to focus on their babies when under duress and maybe to stay hidden from predators and to facilitate breast-feeding

from many hours on end. back critically the stress and anxietyhi is coupled with vigilance if you'dne the newfound awareness aspects of colors and sounds anything that might pose a threat it's a combination of environmental hyper awareness but everybody's behavior. and then they are not afraid to say so this mom will attack a bear another will confront a rattlesnake i watched a little lioness based on a pack of hyenas to defend her comes in these predators ran away. all she really had to do was give them the stink eye. so the angry mommy one point or another dairy cows are

considered the most dangerous large animal in britain by the way in large part because mother cows can sometimes crash and kill human walkers accompanied by dogs especially. so then with a certain oxytocin from the maternal brain so you can enhance aggressive behavior and then who tries to touch. another favorite topic of mommyom brain and the course of the brain transformation the short answer is not really. >> and what new mothers found rewording and then new moms

give up something like 700 hours the first year alone. but there does seem to be an amnesia affect with verbal be call they are not quite as good at remembering words may be because the impressive vocabulary is not as oppressive when you carry on —- caring for the three -month-old infant. those may have better at verbal recall than our first timer as a mother of four in the middle of writing a book this is very bad news the neural differences between mothers of one and experience mothers of multiple children are some of the best evidence there is permanent brain change in humans and mothers of three do better than first time moms. so after looking at all that common threads of all species

not to mention you and me it is interesting toce consider our differences as well. to me the striking differences among human moms is just as interesting as human response moms are not robots we are real people with personalities and all of this factors into the mothers we have become. culture is one obvious and huge the maternal instinct is about the drive of any one specific mothering behavior. we know this because it is so lively across the globe so their animals like rabbits that ritualistically takes the first from their chest and the five if you don't let them do this they cannot care for their baby. meanwhile something a little

bit y like nesting to take away i will still carry on and be a mom. so they are just a few action patterns in humans and those variables of climate and expectations mothers ought to be doing with their downtime. and in some cultures mother talk we breast-feed for different directions or not at all receiving announcing we make eye contact or don't. perhaps the closest thing moms have to universal mothering behavior is bias. orr unconscious tendency on the left especially in the first few months of life. this is actually common when

mothers are swimming with a baby on the left and in one study a walrus mom and the baby sobbing in the water near siberia a town the baby stayed on the mom's lap not just thing out and tree branches and has to do with the brain how we perceive emotion and in human it may better transmit information to the right side of the mom brain where emotional information is processed. also a more expressive left side. i think it literally as possible my husband and i had countless success of why this might be before i learned

about the left l side cradling bias and mom moms can hold their babies however they want scientist you see a preliminary link so one way they study this look into the photo albums that moms are really behavior. there can be different brains scientists found that not all women change to the same degree a larger degree of change and then to be detached with the baby after birth. i find this fascinating and troubling as the variables

that influence and why i am the type of mothers on im. the women with all types of backer backgrounds and situations that these are factors to consider. what, i early on was genetic studies. these women form certain genetics for the oxytocin receptor to turn out to be a more sensitive mother. so in north carolina so interacting in a space to have all sorts of analytical pools taking into account the economic spectrum and other d variables genetic analysis is a common approach so researchers use video coding

in a very finely ingrained and sophisticated way somewhere in the familiar household materials come into play these high-tech experiments so to interact in a lab by researcher please dress up and entering the room but sometimes the researchers sent in a remote control car and then we sit back and watch how the mother and child react to the stimulus. these experiments are designed for kids but not the mom so she s can help some ignore the kids others overreact and everythingt in between they are scoring the mom's every move and then to collect a sample from each month with a simple analysis to see to predict for behavior.

reading these experiments i was worried out have to get my own genes tested if i had that insensitive mommy jean but it turns out it still in this infancy. that's not to say and then to be supermom as alarming as that sounds it's not as simple as a good mom story and then only one that understood that component of those variation in maternal behavior. a human moms environment some

a few of these hidden forces tonight just to list a fuse circumstantial factors to influence maternal behavior to various degrees. did a mom babysit as a kid? did she bottler breast-feed? c-section or natural birth was it unusually painful delivery? of white your girl? how much money is in her bank account? what is the exposure to plastics and other chemicals? is she single? speaking of a diet there is another study when we start to get into the social world killer whales are another that have active and involved this is a very important part of the story but there is some

evidence that a mothers childhood relationship with theirom own mom shapes the behavior in hidden ways so it turns out women who have a good relationship with their mom may have more gray matter in certain areas of their brain these women seem to respond more sharply to pictures of their own kids. is this because maternal behavior runs in families? longitudinal studies have been donene over 30 years over more than a generation as starting out as young kids grow up and become moms. they often act like their own moms what is behind these patterns there is a genetic component but it also explores other explanations my breath and monkeys push around the

mother baby so the animals mother raise foster babies who are not related to them and it turns out they grow up to act like their adopted mother not theea biological mother that the relationship is in part the full experience it's possible the physicalin interaction to the enhanced expression that leads to sensitivity. and it could be silent so to an extent it's not the genes that you have that matter but it's how they are turned on or off. on the opposite endhe of the spectrum moms are also shaped by their children the differences may account for differences in others i know

my four kids would have reacted very differently from what you described earlier and even silly putty to a certain extent this seems to be true so for a long time researchers thought pregnant women would shape the fetus level of arousal's of mana start old and the baby could startle inside her. but then scientist at johns hopkins notice that pattern ran the other way the fetus stimulates the mother so to test this the scientist used other favorite household materials like popcorn kernels they put noise canceling headphones on the pregnant women so they could not hear or see and then they would sneak up with two kernels they wouldth rattle really loudly

only the fetus could hear and the response triggered a response in another changing their heart rate. of course some fetus are more sensitive and reactive than others. now investigating how the unborn may already be conditioning their mothers to prepare for an active work on child then the other aspects with those baby releasers to constitute what we have cuteness and the other factors into make more energy rich breast milk one study found seems common across mammals but no cows forever seem to make a greater volume is not for daughters that dairy farmers like but also a larger

environment where mother and baby find themselves a social network is vitally important to study these influences which have complex social h relationships that are more like ours. marshmallows are a favorite monkey food as well as a favorite canned food. they california national primary research center it was a little eerie that's like what you see it every day care and playground don't forget the pumpkins at halloween scientist go to watch these multiple times per week keeping tabs on their behavior not only to identify certain factors that one of the proximity to their own mother

and other female relatives even though recent monkeys don't go to menopause they go through a cordial relationship with their own mom to be in the same enclosure and then to point out in humans the importance of the maternal grandma could be as global constant that is with the left brain cradle bias maternal grandmother's take the physical and mental health taking them special foods to eat for offering social support that sometimes can have health problems including postpartum depression. another variable is the alpha female these factors may make them more confident are anxious to handle the baby to change the chemicals in her

bloodrm or milk those hierarchical differences like income equality associated with postpartum depression access to resources is another big difference in another monkey rather than new york state will test the access to resources to shape maternal behavior this contraption looks like a beverage service cart on an airplane but has a bunch of holes on the side for the monkeys to reach in their hand and feel for the food amonged the woodchip this piece of highly specialized equipment was like it could be handy around my house. so in the science experiments sometimes that foraging car is easy to findth all the moms in the experiment ultimately get

enough food to eat and it was the hard to find some arms don't know week to week and then to never know what kind of food they were getting the mood of material on —- maternal behavior disintegrates and then the baby has a psychological damage and economics of maternal mental health and behavior. so event like economic downturns can lead to miscarriage and low birth weight and unexpected increases adverse conditions like poverty or even simple things like diaper shortages

some scientist even think postpartums depression is adaptive a way to distance mom from her babies to move away if they survive and then they can pass on to another baby. it's all scary to contemplate but the good news as humans we have a lot of collective control over our environment. we can make the world better for mothers. scientist are developing and i was in the lab at columbia university where they's had postpartum therapies so listening to meditation tapes. other pregnant women out there? maybe you could volunteer.

but really the best thing to do with that national environmenten for mothers increasing the feelings of economic and social stability. those core differences is likely one reason why postpartum depression is by country. we already have maternal behavior to improve health and sanitation policies to drastically cut down in the last century with a hyper investment from what we see also howell maternal behavior like stress and isolation from the aforementioned grandmas and then that loneliness in young mothers. we continue to improve the

mothers with financial and healthcare policy and having intensive nursing services for mothers sometimes for years after they leave the hospital. so paid paternity leave with the anti- anxiety medications and then they felt that are supported. without maternal instinct to leave the mothers high and dry and then with all kinds of files the maternal instinct is quite real so that a lot of the plastic stuff it can band and then eventually break. thank you. >> thank you. that is very interesting.

if you have questions type them in the q&a. >> how hard was it to write this? >> and then to throw a wrench in the sometimes. but that i have the good fortune of living in connecticut and yale university were this is a hub for these kind of experiments the child's studies center with the global authority and that makeses it possible for me

to meet up with some of these moms and that's really hard to do for distance. there are moms in richfield that i am sure that with covid restrictions lifting they will be looking for moms to go into the lab to do these fascinating things which was one of the best things we can do as moms and humans because these experiments are hard to recruit for any think they are super interesting. >> this is a comment and absolutely fascinating and affirming.

>> i found it to be super interesting i never considered i was a science writer with two children when i heard about the fact there was developments of change and motherhood. and then the more interesting it got and then can i continue to learn more fascinating things. so even to be told and there will be visit to have a meal pregnancy is slightly different for your body and brain than a girl. i didn't know these things that having boys brings with it a lot of extra health risks were moms andnd even mental health risk. women who are pregnant with

boys slightly on —- slightly more likely to have postpartum depression and even more fascinating research about how the environment we areir talking about the importance of the world in which a mother finds herself can load the dice to whether or not you have a boy or girl in the first place so that is an 50/50 proposition but actually to be very well established evidence that women who are really stressed out or are stressful are more likely to have girls so after 9/11 not just in the greater new york area that nationally there was a dip in the number of expected male birth nine months later and that is very common that you shows how

those feelings come into play. >> , she father's brains change during pregnancy andnd after the birth of his child? >> that's a good question. in the study i was talking about where they measured pregnant women brains before they became pregnant they were able to develop an algorithm based on brain scans alone. and that algorithm was not able to spot. change is not exactly the same and it is a lot more variable. so that's all the way from not changing at all from having no contact with the mother of your child and the baby they

don't change in the same way that a mom well but all the way to the other end of the spectrum there are studies on to father households that show that dad screens can start to resemble other screens if given the primary responsibility for the incident and then there is some reverse engineering. if they have intense exposure than the maternal steel begins to grow. so the way moms and dads do things that they do have to do the babies. there is a lot of disparities there. there are differences but there is a fascinating field of research from when the

fetus sells cross the placenta during the pregnancy into the mother's body and embeds in her tissue tose become part of heart tissue or liver tissue there is a lot of debate what the cells are doing in your body for the rest of your life but they can also take it across the brain barriers and become numb. so then we have the cells of ourma children maybe all four children are fighting and that's something with the experience that they are not identical experiences. >> i remember hearing how anderson cooper was so upset his son started to walk and did not see it.

spent the conclusion they need social support structures so are you aware of any public policy measures that would improve outcomes? >> it does seem obvious and it is shocking to me to learn. and then you had better social support that if you have a baby and some of these european countries they will send a baby nurse home with you from the hospital four weeks t to help you take care of the new baby and your other children and in australia they have nurses keeping tabs on new moms four years. and one measly postpartum

visit t and then it becomes pediatrician centric. so there was a fascinating study the number one environmental factor that question of new connecticut mothers was lack of access to disposable diapers it wasn't like food insecurity or relationship but a very simple thing that the women were stressed out because they didn't know where the next diapers were coming from if you were someone living in poverty and that is a measure that cries out for public action and with postpartum depression and maternal substance abuse this is

incredibly expensive and with this research to had these problems often them on the bed not only ist it the right thing to do but the economical thing to do. >> next question i found this very interesting. off-topic but what year did you graduate? hearing that it- can be triggered and adoptive moms. >> in 1988 was a long time ago so yes. i think the research on how mammals that have given birth can change and develop a maternal capacity with that

inspiring research and there is brain growth with these lab rats and human moms with the adoptive moms but they found that given enough time foster moms and adoptive moms respond to their babies much like biological moms so that is a fascinating thing the other thing that i love was the importance of nurture. so the idea that any child that you take care of for have a relationship with then you are molding that child as a future mother and arguably generationsrg of mothers just by keeping tabs.

so that science of adoptive moms is one of the coolest things. >> the conditions a social economic status and postpartum anxiety disorder makes a lot of sense is there any connection are finding that surprised you? >> i was very surprised that a public health scholar in california who studies the relationship between economic downturn and sudden infant death syndrome i was shocked by that. i can't remember the statistics with a small drop in the cities economy with the five or 8 percent uptick that suddenly died. i was shocked by that but also how a military base announcing

a closing suddenly leads to an uptick in a premature birth in that area i guess i wasn't quite as aware of how to and into the environment moms really are and how they are responding to these cues in ways that are not always on the outside basically stories. >> behavioral psychology none of these maternal tendencies when this person studied psychology in 19 fiftiesyo you discuss the sleep that new moms experienced. >> i should be studied.

it is a very hot topic the idea of new moms that lose cognitive capacity when they have children and it's a very dangerous topic in a way provided office said this at the top that one of the things and those that are on the cutting edge of thehe work are young mothers or even pregnant women making these humongous stride in science. and certainly and then in particular the area related to

memory that scientists go back and forth and then the studies contradict each other so that would be meta-analysis if there wasy a trend to say yes moms are losing some verbal recall if is not what they saw on the brain scan that is begging for more research and those data points of why they need that social support so much because when you are falling down of exhaustion it's easy to get frustrated and then if somebody else

could step in and help you then you can see something that only youou can do. >> what are some of your favorite parenting or motherhood books? >> on the light side my favorite ones the battle hymn of the tiger mother but that does pack a lot of punch with the idea of culture and parentingha that is something i was very interested in and it points out in france the parenting advice it is still

taken very seriously and points out then all the children ended up in orphanages so i thought that was a fascinating point and here we have doctor spock but in france these others that way shape the philosophy and the aspect. but those that matthew out of the american parenting mode to think about what it would be like for parents like modern france and this is where they are scarce that is

unthinkable. which is about life and in very poor parts of brazil and it is stunning to imagine what people into her routinely that don't seem to compute in our modern mind. >> these are important studies the research is fascinating and to be financially supportive. >> does anybody have any more questions or comments? thank you so much abigail

tucker for coming thank you very much for books on the comments to cosponsoring this program the next talk is on august 11 talking with veterinarian. . . . . building ,

upgrading technology, and powering opportunity in communities both big and small. charter is connecting us. charter communication along with other television companies supporting c-span2 as a public service. i'm so thrilled to have you joining us for an ongoing virtual author event series, which we have been doing for about 16 months and we've had the great privilege and pleasure of hosting well over 160 plus all the events in that time. we talked to a lot of amazing people, talked about a lot of great books and it's been a great