good evening everyone.

i'd like to welcome you to our author >> good evening welcome to the author talk on behalf of the richfield library and the new indoor program coordinator here at t the library. first i would like to think or sponsor, books on the common for tenants program. now it gives me great pleasure to announce the introduction of abigail tucker, the author inside the new science of our ancient maternal instinct a journalist and mother and new york times best-selling author and a graduate of richfield high school her new title mom jeans which is published talking about the psychology of motherhood. part memoir lead to leaving the latest research with her personal experiences with delightful surprising and poignant portrait ofa

motherhood. put your questions in the q and ath we will go over them at the end and welcome. for having me. thank you to books on the common and the library for everyone joining us tonight. i'm not a journalist interested in all kinds of projects but especially fascinated by the science of domestic life and what you might call the history of the familiar. my first book l called the mayan in the living room was about domestication over 10000 years and selective changes that ultimately help them to conquer the world. my new book is a look at the new science of the ancient maternal instinct. passive human bb share certain key physical characteristics that scientist take the time and trouble toe study these

features in the scientific literature include big guys a snub nose and round cheeks accidental but striking resemblance is one reason they were able to take over the world without giving humanity too much in return you can almost say to resemble human babies our pets pray on our maternal instincts the other interesting connection the changes over those 10000 years to run rip shot in certain households. my book is about brain change but more rapidly over ten months in the course of pregnancy instead of over

10000 years although it may feel like 10000 years for some of us but if you see pictures with before and after pregnancy the brain somewhat the same they have changes of gray matter in volume in areas related to processing one lab found they could identify women who have been pregnant based on brain scans alone. these changes seem to be permanent also cumulative deepening with multiple children so these changes are likely common across mammal moms of many species but alongside the universality there are many ways that each human mother is unique no to mom brains looking alike the physical brain change that scientist are still trying to understand is behind the idea

we call maternal instinct the sensitization to the bbq's and's the desire to respond and the court pro baby drive as an awakening and a renaissance masking of a new identity and often chemically incentivized of the hormones of the pregnancy and lactation but doesn't have to be it is the most profound mental change outside of childhood barring a traumatic brain injury our brains are plastic and changing and moldable like plato scientist consider motherhood a distinct state of human development it's a little bit like adolescence going members around the world they are interested along with all types of high-tech tools my kids love to get their

hands on. wire mom so interesting one reason is the anatomy of the maternal brain is shared across mammal so by instinct is a common thread in the nurture of all kinds of species. scientists also hypothesize maternal circuitry supply is a raw material for unique social phenomenon like romantic love or altruism language and music. and there are more other practical reasons globally 90 percent that become others even in america 86 percent of us are mothers by the time we reach our mid-forties about 70 percent of moms are in the workforce and more american households than ever they are an important economic and

political force as well. is a mother of four young children myself i'm often interested for these selfish reasons becoming mother is a baffling and be will during a fair the physical changes of pregnancy are alarming enough to gain 60 pounds practically overnight and then suddenly grow straight here after years has been currently your whole life and then to have mom bodies and dad bodies in the psychological ramifications. the internal aspects are more striking change than what's going on on the outside. the brain is not the first organ that comes to mind when you think of childbirth but it is a key player why do i dream

differently why cannot find the smell of my daughter's diapers disgusting why are the christ hearing living apart other limits to this love? wrapping my mind around the daily wonder of motherhood i wonder about the downsides my really stupid or or am i just tired or is something else going on entirely also health to consider which impacts us in the moms that we know one striking piece of evidence of concrete nature of the maternal transformation how they proliferate at the time of birth the questions afflict one out of five women but we still don't really know what causes this disease or how to treat it assesses compulsive disorder has 10 percent of new

mothers and bipolar also is most likely to pop up on the birth of her first child it's not all sunshine and daisy rattles people's lives are at stake in understanding the maternal brain. and then to be interested in the science of domestic life in the heading complexity when he started to read the literature with all the gadgets like i powered microscopes and many tools used in experiments are just junk from around my house the researchers like remote control cars and cereal and marshmallows and familylo photo albums and endless plastic toys i will show you how does scientist show in the pantries and closets in the playroom to

get at the bottom of what is happening in my brain. but first there is one other to know about i don't have it in my house, rodents we do have a pet hamster but because of those maternal instinct we can use animal models like lab rats r and mice to go inside her schools i visited the lab at new york university how his students probed that internal circuitry female rats and mice really do not like babies a lot of the junk food is actually rats and- mice treats

they love charleston chew bars and froot loops and supersweet stuff. babies are not so sweet to them on the other hand. a female mouse will run away from the sound of mouse babies crying. and that is the best case scenario is to be ignored sometimes female rats will attack the babies and even kill them. but just around the time a pregnant rativ gives birth for the first time a startling change takes place inside of her suddenly she refers her pups to food a new mother rat will press a bar exceedingly infinite number of times this is any baby not just from her own letter and an early experiment one mother cap the bar nearly 700 times in four hours and did not stop until the scientist in charge threw up his hands and ended the

experiment they will also choose their pups over cocaine causing the electric grid to the babies that they once ran over ray from literally this is quite shocking to contemplate that sounds familiar to many mothers who had a similar epiphany in the hospital but after giving birth looking for clues how the chemical of pregnancy birth and lactation might facilitate the behavioral change to kickoff the process of long-lasting brain growth we see in human brain scan. for instance some release oxytocin the hormone associated with labor and delivery and also social bonding into mice that were not pregnant yet over the course of three hours they could watch the individual brain cells become desensitized responding more sharply to the sound of the

cries they acted more like mothers brains and now if you put them in a cage with babies is not that they would run away but they may even perform maternal behaviors but the story is far more complicated from a singlera neurotransmitter in real life a lot of other chemicals are involved like estrogen and progesterone and dopamine in ways that scientist are still trying to understand. and it's not all chemicals either you can rebirth an engineer and they also how virgin mice can become maternal if they are in a

supervised way for about a week once hostile female unloaded studies suggest the brain is transforming accordingly in key areas as a latent potential in every brain that was the right nourishment to grow and could be what actually happens with adopted mother's but now back to rodent scientist are sure they found what they call the essential side of maternal behavior in rats this deep down part of the brain receives a lot of sensory information and rewards 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 they will still continue to care for their pups but if you disable that area of their brain the moms period retrieving her pups and go back to the charleston shoes so to be involved in human moms and then respond to the bbq's lucky for you and me furthermore human moms are not the same as rats our brains are much larger and more complicated with extra layers. despitent humans using a different set of tools they use modern-day imaging tools like mris to see how mom's blood moves around inside the skulls and also the studies

which measure the readings and that eeg is not something you have lying around my house but i can t try one out when i volunteered for some experiments in the third trimester of may 4th pregnancy last year that was when the last things i did in 2020 before the pandemic lockdown began it's a very different setet of toys it similar to the rodent. scientist exposed human women mothers and nine mothers and dads to stimuli like baby cries and baby faces and watch what happens next. in one experiment looked at a bunch of pictures of dad's happy and angry babies well pushing a button as fast as i could moms respond differently than other people do including our former cells before b we

became mom if we see baby faces or baby cries our brain is more sharp we have different parts of the brain as well have stronger reactions and we seem to be more responsive to cries of pain and of course there are major differences between human moms and wrap moms all babies are created equal. but for some human moms like sheep or herd animals that raise offspring in chaotic communities not in snug underground birth to be responsive to babies we need to be able to tell the kids a part from somebody else's kid and then to become desensitized the human mother learns to recognize her own

infant by sight and smell and sound very quickly is happens a most instantaneously and scientist have a tough time mixing a perfume to trick the mothers once they have the babies sent memorized in humans learning is a bit slower taking a day or two but it happens in one fascinating experiment scientist noted women in a crowded maternity ward and 48 hours they would wait forcr the sound of their babies cry only when sleep to the others of the other but in different patterns scientists call this maternal awakening a newfound affinity for an responsiveness to scented sensitization with childbirth and lactation causing the

appearance of new receptors so they start to fire together our influent is the start of thee universe the most fascinating thing in the world other thing is going on the human moms as well simulate pregnancy women like many mammals are undergoing deafening responses to stay cool s and collected with real-life earthquakes after the big one in california scientist contacted the pregnant subjects and found a reported less stress than otherte people new moms don't produce as many stress hormones as other people do if you stick our hands in i.c.e. water or show a scary pictures this evolved to help mothers

focus on the babies when under duress and maybe to allow us to have a safe haven to facilitate breast-feeding and that involves first sitting for many hours on end but this anxiety is coupled with maternal ambivalence that newfound awareness including aspects like color and sound and especially strangers anything that could pose a threat and it c is a combination of environmental hyper- awareness that's everybody's favorite behavior of maternal aggression a moose mom will attack a bear another will confront a rattlesnake i watched alone lioness face down a pack of hyenas to

protect her cubs and eventually ran away all she really had to do was give them the stinkth eye. we allll have encountered an angry mom at one point dairy cows are considered the most dangerous large animals by the way in large part because mother cows attack and sometimes crash and kill human walkers especially with dogs they found they can start moms attack behavior by stopping that oxytocin area and by giving extra oxytocin you can enhance aggressive behavior if they try to touch a babies cheek another favorite topic is whether moms do get stupider in the short answer is not really does get better

at certain tasks but when you mothers find rewarding granted lost sleep and new moms give up 700 hours in the first year alone but there does seem to be that affect verbal recall. moms are not quite as good at remembering words maybe that vocabulary is not as important with a three -month-old infant but interestingly these effects are cumulative mothers of three may be worse at verbal recall and first timers as a mother of four in the middle of writing this book it is very bad news to receive. on the right side the neural differences between mothers of one or multiples are some of the best evidence of his permanent brain change in

humans and with the wrap moms mothers of free to better than first time moms. so looking at all of these commonon threads not to mention it's interesting to look in our differences that as well. striking difference among human moms are just as interesting as common responses moms are not robots we are real people with personalities and all of this factors into the mothers we have become culture is one huge and obvious aspect so maternal instinct is with the drive more than any one specific mothering behavior and we know this because that becomes so lively across the globe animals like rabbits past the ritual by tearing out

the for from there chest and sides and if t you don't let them do that they cannot care for their baby. meanwhile it's a little bit like a nesting instinct i can still carry on to be a mom but there are only a few action patterns in humans and is dictated by climate and hyper local expectations of mothers are to be doing with her downtime so in some cultures the mothers language doesn't work we breast-feed for different durations are not at all we singled out saying. we make eye contact are we don't. the closest thing moms have to universal mothering behaviors

left sided cradling bias a tendency to hold babiesnt on the left especially the first few months of life this is common across mammals of many types when mothers swimming or galloping with a baby on the left in one study and i'm the remote island than the baby stayed on the mom's lap and then hanging out in tree branches this bias likely has to do with the lateral brain and how we perceive the baby state and emotion humans may better transmit information to the right side where emotional information is processed so

it's literally impossible to hold the baby on my right side or to change a diaper of the babies head is on the right i've had countless discussions why this might be before i learned and certainly women can hold theirwa babies however they want and is a preliminary link right holding a depression and mothers one way they studied it is the photo album waiting the mom's closet again. and with the primitive behavior to moms on the same block can have pretty different brains and then to scan before and after not all women changed in the same degree a larger degree of in gray matter had a stronger maternal attachment to the baby after birth they

can use the brain scan to forecast aspects of her maternal behavior i find this tg to be interested in those variables why you are the type of mother thatou you are and why i am the mother that i am stressing that women from all types of backgrounds that these are interesting factors to consider so those born with genetic variants like oxytocin receptor turns out to be measurably more sensitive and then to interacting in a space in the living room all sorts taking into account the economic background but in

this living room like space secondse by second video encoding and that comes into play some interacting in the lab a researcher plays dress-up putting on a friendly ogre costume and surprises the mother and the child sometimes they send in a remote-controlled car disguised as a spider then we sit back and watch how the mother and child react. these experiments are designed but not the mom some ignore the kids others overreact and everything in between those that score the mom's every move and then collecting a

sample with that simple genetic analysis to see if one or another predicts behavior. reading these experiments suddenly i got worried i have to get my own genes tested to see if i had that sensitive or insensitive gene. it turns out the work is in its infancy. with that invariant and real-world maternal behavior. lifestyle scientist at work now to breed supermom pay exam cows is not as simple as a good mom gene story and then

that understood component of maternal behavior. knows that her to study that motive influence but if you these hidden forces tonight i will list a few circumstantial factors that influence maternal behavior to various degrees. did a mom babysit? how will this she? bottler breast-feed? c-section our natural birth and usual painful delivery? boy or girl? how much money is in the bank accountt? what is a lifelong exposure to plastics or chemicals? is she single? there is another study of interest when we get into the importance of social world

killer whales is another w very animal human grandmas are very important part of the story but whether or not your mom babysit today there is some evidence of mothers relationship with her own mom can shape her behavior and hidden ways it turns out women who have good relationships with their moms may have more gray matter in certain areas of their brain they also seem to respond more sharply of their pictures of their own kids is this maternal behavior longitudinal studies over 30 yearsam following the same over a generation and then grow up to become moms act like their own moms used to. what is behind these patterns

obviously some genetic component but it explores alternatives. lab rats and monkeys so the mo mothers raise foster babies who are not related to them. ittu turns out they grow up like the adopted matters not the birth mother so to be transmitted through experience it is possible the physical interaction may lead to the enhanced expression of certain genes that leads to sensitivity. the same genes may be silent for those early life experiences. so it's noten the genes that you have's that matter it's how they are on or off by the nurturing that you received.

on the opposite end of the spectrum, moms are shaped by their children the differences in children may account for the differences i know my four kids would have reacted very differently to what we described earlier which in turn would have shaped my behavior. this seems to be true even before birth and for a long time researchers thought pregnant women's level of arousal if mom is startled the baby will startle inside of her. but then scientist at john hopkins notice the pattern ran the other way the fetus stimulates the mother so to test this the scientist use other household materials like popcorn kernels they put a gel mask and noise canceling headphones on the pregnant

women so they could not hear or see then they snuck up on the pregnant women with popcorn kernels that they rattled very loudly above the pregnant belly and in response to get a response in the mother changing the heart rate. of course some fetus are more sensitive and reactive than others they are now investigating how the unborn could be conditioning mothers for inactive for calm child. than the other aspect including when i earlier and intelligence or other factors. so for example moms is slightly more energy have breast milk for boys versus girls s that sex -based milk

production is common across mammals milk cows make a greater volume of milk for daughters so that's what the reformers probably like but also the environment mother and baby find themselves a little social network to study these influences they have to use monkeys with that relationships more like ours monkey work where marshmallows come in they are a favorite monkey food so after lab it was a little eerie because the monkey equipment is exactly like the time you see it every day care and playground they get pumpkins at halloween and

scientist watch multiple times per week keeping tabs on their behavior they now emphasize factors shaping with that proximity to other female relatives even though rhesus mothers don't go through menopause they come to a cordial relationship with their own mom and have support just from having her in the same enclosure. the importance of the maternal grandmother may cradle for cultures all over the globe with thes daughters physical and mental health making them special foods to eat and then to guard against the health problems including depression. another is through social

status these factors are more confident to handle the baby to stress the chemicals in her buttermilk but like income equality or some time associated with postpartum depression those resources is another big difference like food another lab in new york state scientist use the device call the variable foraging cart to testing resources shape maternal behavior. this contraption looks like a beverage service cart on an airplane but a bunch of holes on the side for monkeys to reach their hands into feel for food among the woodchips. this piece of highly specialized equipment to look like ito could be handy in my house to parcel out goldfish

crackers but in the science experiment it was easy to find sometimes it's hard to find. on moms ultimately get enough to eat and those with hard to find our attentive mothers just like easy to find but they don't know week to week if they g get a hard or an easy card and the ones that experience chronic conditions and never know what kindat of food they will be getting from week to week attentive maternal behavior disintegrates and babies sustained physiological damage even with human moms research certainty is dangerous and the impact can have mental impact and behavior events like economic downturn canal

miscarriage and the birth weight babies even unexpected increases in sudden infant death syndrome. even simple things like diaper shortages could be triggers for postpartum depression some scientist even think postpartumci depression is adaptive a way to distance to survive until conditions improve. it's all scary to contemplate but the good news there is a lot of collective control over the environment we can make the world better for mothers scientist are developing postpartum medications and in a lab that can be university studying postpartum therapies actually ended up getting meditation tapes and the baby lotion massage all in the name of science. maybe you could volunteer so

preliminary if it evidence shows the response to the bbq's that really the best thing to do is the national environment for mothers before trouble hits by increasing feelings of economic and social stability if it sounds hard it is better support from others is likely one reason why postpartum depression seems to vary by country we are already facing maternal behavior and to improve health and sanitation polity policies we foster the high for investment that we see on the playground today we've also seen how it has larger cues

before the aforementioned grandmas those those with financial and healthcare policy and those that continue for weeks or years after they leavers the hospital and paid paternity leave correlated with the anti- anxiety medication possibly because the mother felt better supported we should is the immeasurable reality of the maternal instinct as an excuse to be new mothers high and dry and assume mother nature will take care of everything and then with all kinds of odds the maternal instinct is quite real but like a lot of the plastic stuff we have lying around our houses it can bend and eventually break. thank you.

>> that was very interesting. thank you. if you have questions please put them in the q&a. anyone? no open questions? >> how hard was it to write this? with the whole family. >> the four kids through our attention to things sometimes had the good fortune of living in connecticut which is

the have for a lot of the's experiments and that made it possible for me to meet up with some of these moms who goes to the lab to watch them which is been hard to watch from a distance and from richfield and those that are serious about this i am sure that with covid restrictions lifting yale will be looking for moms to go into the lab to do some of these fascinating things and that's what we can do is moms and humans because these are hard to recruit for it super interesting but you have to make that effort. >> good for you.

>> this is fascinating and so affirming. >> thank you. i found it all to be super interesting and it struck me i never considered and i was a science writer with two children when i first heard the fact there was developmental change and i was floored. the more he learns the more interesting and got and then to learn fascinating things when papers come outom and i really felt like moms should be told in their opening visits so my male pregnancy is slightly different for your body and brain than a girl. i didn't know these things i didn't know that having boys

come with extra health risks or even mental health risks there is a rise women that are pregnant with boys slightly more likely to have postpartum depression and even more fascinating research of how the environment we were talking about like the importance of the world that the mother and one —- finds herself can roll the dice if you have a boy or girl in the first place we think it's roll of the dice or 50/50 but evidence shows women who are stressed out or go through stressful events are more likely to have girls. after 9/11 not just in the greater new york area that nationally there was a debt in the number of expected male births nine months after 9/11

and that's very common. >> how much the fathers brains change during the pregnancy and after the birth of his child? >> that's a really good question. in the study i was talking that with a measure pregnant women's brains before birth and then two years later they could develop an algorithm that can spot moms based on brain scans along. but it cannot spot the dad. so the change is not exactly the same and is a lot more variable.

dads can go all the way from not changing at all if they have no contact with the mother of their child or the baby, they don't change the same way that a mom will all the way to the other end of the spectrum where there are studies on to father households where dad's brains can really resemble mothers brains if they are given the primary responsibility for the infant the net reverse engineering even though they do not necessarily give birth but has intense exposure that very deep down t in the brain that maternal seed starts to grow. a lot of the differences we perceived the way moms and dads do things have to do with the amount of exposure you have to the babies for cultural reasons there is a lot of disparities there.

even with that said there are differences i don't think that can account for with research for when the fetus sells cross the placenta into the pregnancy into the mother's body and then embed into her tissue part of her liver tissue or heart tissue and what these bodies are doing in your body for the rest of your life but they found they also can cross the blood brain barrier and become neurons so in the moms school we have the cells of our children maybe offer children are up there fighting an asset something that dads have so it can be equally profound.

>> i remember hearing how anderson cooper was so upset his little baby son started to walk and he did not see it and his partner did not tell him. [laughter] so the conclusion that mother these social support structures to thrive seems obvious are youud aware of any public policy measures coming out that would improve outcomes for moms in the us? >> and it is shocking to learn because i knew that europe had better social support but i didn't realize with these european countries and then they come home for weeks and in australia nurses will keep

tabs on new moms for years so in america you get one measly postpartum visit and then drop off the face of the earth so there is really big expensive measures like that but it's a fascinating study the number one environmental factor that is correlated with depression is lack of access to disposable diapers it wasn't food insecurity or relationships but a very simple thing that these women were stressed out because they didn't know if the next diapers were coming from and there were barriers to getting diapers.

internet public action and with postpartum depression all of these things are devastating and incredibly expensive. not only is it the right thing to do bad economical thing to do. >> i'm a stepmom but with no children of my own and find this very interesting. off-topic what year did you graduate so somethings could be triggered and adopted moms. >> yes. class of 98. and i think the research and

mammals that have not physically given birth can nonetheless develop the maternal capacity with that inspiring research there is brain growth that goes on in the lab rats. with the adopted moms that given enough time foster moms and m adopted moms and then biological moms do and it's a fascinating thing so they love this idea the importance of nurturing. and then to have a relationship with weather related by blood he were molding that child is a future

mother. so i think the science of adopted moms is wonderful. >> those connections between socialn economic status and it makes sense. are there any connections or findings that surprise you. >> there is a public health scholar who studies thees relationship between the economic downturn with sudden infant death syndrome. i wasy shocked by the fact i cannot remember exactly the statistics and the cities economy for an 8 percent

uptick i was shocked by that and also how a military base closing when suddenly lead to an attack on —- uptake of premature births in the area. i guess i wasn't quite as aware of how to do into the environment and how we are constantly observing and responding to the cues and ways that are not always to us on the outside they are not always happy stories basically. >> another comment behavioral psychology noted these maternal tendencies when this person studied psychology in the fifties you discuss all

the loss of sleep. >> oh yes. it should definitely bet studied and i think it can be underestimated when you talk about this hot topic of new moms lose cognitive capacity when they have children and it's a very dangerous topic and of a said this in the talk but one of the cool things is that so many other researchers on the cutting edge of this world on —- work have humongous strides in science and publishing all the time and certainly not losing their

marbles but that said this idea if there is cognitive deficit that has occurred in the areas related to me but then scientist go back and forth still and then the studies contradict each other but it was that announcement to see the trend so yes, moms are losing some verbal recall and that is the gray matter they see on the brain scan were notnk sure exactly at why that it's definitely something that is begging for more research and another data point why moms need social

support because when you follow down is easy to get frustrated and is somebody else could step in to help you then not something that only you can do. >> agreed. let's see. what are some of your favorite parenting books you have read? >> favorite ones are battle hymf the tiger mother. they pack a lot of punch. the idea of culture and parenting is something that i was very interested in and i

know that pamela zuckerman points out that in france the parenting advice is still taken very seriously and she finds out all five of his children ended up in orphanages. i found that to be a really kind of fascinating point that here we have today emily oscar who i know i i'm like very much but in france they are reading other attacks not just about parenting philosophy but aspects of national policy. there are other books that tend to take you out of the american parenting mode and make you think about what it would be like to parent not just in a

place that is kind of familiar trust like france but in a place where research really is scarce and mothers are constantly dealing with unthinkable and hellacious situations. is it took called death without -- which is about life but also a lot about mothering and parts of brazil and is just stunning to imagine the things that people endure routinely and somehow we are told to endure but that don't seem to be in our modern privileged mom times. >> here's a nice comment. these are important studies. the research is fascinating in hopefully you will continue to be financially supported. does anyone have any more

questions or comments? okay then thank you so much abigail tucker. and thank you everyone for coming and thank you very much to books on common for sponsoring this program. her next program will be august august 11 and veterinarians melissa shapiro talks about a dog named david who is poor and deaf and blind and has for millions to graham followers. i wish that i had copy of the book to hold up and i do not guess i just started its library but you can purchase abigail's book mom jeans from books on common. thank you so much abigail. that was really interesting. >> thank

booktv.org. >> first of all i'm delighted as always to say thanks to the national archives staff and the acknowledgments of the "the man who hated