Will Bad Mothering Become the Newest Disorder?

On the Women's Bioethics Blog, Sabrina W wonders whether the growing interest in oxytocin-based drugs could place mothers under medical scrutiny.

The way humans are wired is, labor and natural childbirth releases waves of oxytocin that not only produce contractions that expel the baby and dull pain, but also begin the bonding process between mother and child. Later, mothering helps shape the oxytocin response in the baby's brain.

She writes,

It is often the case that the presence of a "cure" will pathologize any condition that could be treated by it. How long until a mother, or even a woman without children, who "lacks a nurturing personality" will experience social pressure to "correct her deficiency"?

This is reminiscent of early thinking on autism, that it was the mother's fault. So-called "refrigerator mothers," who weren't warm to their children, could damage their kids and create autistic symptoms.

While that theory is out the window, many researchers wonder if the heavy-duty dose of artificial oxytocin routinely given to laboring women could be at fault.

Comments

[Paul Sunstone]

Sabrina makes an interesting point. Societies have pressured people to conform to social expectations and ideals since time began. There seems little reason to believe that won't increase as we learn more and more how to intervene in our behaviors. I have no idea what the practical solution to that might be, though.

[Susan Kuchinskas]

I agree with you, Paul. But for everyone who feels pressured to conform to societal expectations, how many are there who suffer because they feel like outsiders? (I'll raise my hand here, although I'm now happily in a social group and a town where nonconformity is the norm.)

Anyway, when we're talking about connecting with other people, AKA love, it's more than a societal expectation, it's a physiological need. And in the case of new mothers, their babies really really need them to love them; otherwise their brains, nervous systems and neurochemistries don't develop correctly.

As I learn more about attachment disorders in kids, I start to feel that, if there were a treatment that could reliably make mothers more loving, maybe it should be mandated by law (I'm semi-kidding here).