“Where Is My Maternal Instinct?”

“Where Is My Maternal Instinct?”

By Thelma Ramirez, Ed.M

Gloria’s Story

I had begun visiting Gloria five months earlier. She, like many other mothers on my caseload, had sought out our home visiting program because she and her husband were first-time parents. They had recently moved away from family in another state and welcomed me into their home, eager to receive the resources and information about child development that our home visiting program offered. 

This was the first time I would be seeing Gloria since she had given birth. At our most recent home visit, Gloria had talked through her birth plan with me as she showed me the hospital bag she and her husband had packed. She was ready to finally meet her baby.

Gloria opened the door, welcoming me in with her usual smile, and immediately introduced me to her baby. She shared that things had not gone as planned at the hospital and that her recovery had been rough. The family support she had been counting on hadn’t come through, and her husband was already back at work after only a few days off. Gloria was glad that she and the baby were healthy, but she felt overwhelmed.

As I began to ask about the baby’s development, Gloria interrupted me to ask, “Am I a bad mom because I don’t feel connected to my baby? I’m sure I love him. I just don’t know what’s wrong.”

Gloria’s question was not an unfamiliar one. Over the years that I visited families, iterations of this question often came up, especially in the first days and weeks postpartum. Mothers would share guiltily that the feelings of happiness and warmth they anticipated experiencing when the baby came home with them had never come. Instead, they spoke of anxiety, exhaustion, and, at times, a looming sense of dread that came with caring for their newborn. 

This sense of guilt and failure that many new parents experience when they are unable to immediately bond with their baby largely stems from societal expectations that parents, namely mothers, have an innate knowledge and set of caregiving behaviors that are an automatic part of becoming and being a parent. 

Damali Campbell, MD, a physician in obstetrics and gynecology and addiction medicine at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, talks about this all-too-familiar parent guilt. “People think everybody is supposed to be happy and you are supposed to feel a certain way when the baby comes, and there can be a lot of guilt when parents are not feeling happy. It is really important to normalize that there is no ‘one way’ a parent will feel when their baby arrives. Everybody is so different. The reality is that it really depends on so many things.”

When we talk loosely about “maternal instinct,” we risk sending the message that good parents just know what to do and feel the right things right away. 

The Parental Brain

Before the baby arrived, as Gloria shared with me about the physical changes she was experiencing, we also talked about the changes she was undergoing that may be harder for her to see. I shared with her what I was learning about the adult brain’s ability to change and grow in response to early parenthood. At the time, this research was more limited, but we now know that as we ready ourselves for parenthood, important neurobiological changes take place in our brains. These changes help us become more emotionally receptive to our infant’s verbal and nonverbal cues — such as their gestures of excitement or giggles of delight — and heighten our vigilance about their safety, attuning us to their cries of distress. What I didn’t fully appreciate then — and what I try to communicate more clearly now — is that these brain changes don’t guarantee an immediate feeling of connection; they get us ready. The rest comes from experience and support.

Taken without context, this information may unintentionally convey the message that when our babies come home with us, we will instinctively know what to do and feel good about doing it. While the science reveals that brain changes help prepare adults for parenthood, it also shows that adapting to a “parental brain” takes time and is driven as much by caregiving experience — by exposure to caregiving practices and nurturing behaviors such as holding, comforting, and feeding our babies — as by the hormonal shifts of pregnancy and childbirth.

We also know that the feelings of affection we sometimes expect to flood us when we meet our babies for the first time do not typically develop until several days after birth, with some women struggling to feel them even several months later, as turned out to be the case with Gloria. Although Gloria was caring for her baby regularly, the feelings of love and connection she anticipated took longer for her to experience. In Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood, Chelsea Conaboy explains that “a parent’s love is neither automatic nor absolute. In a sense, the brain works to keep our babies alive until the heart catches up. It transforms us into protective, even obsessive caregivers when so many of us lack any skill whatsoever in actual child-rearing.”  

When we talk loosely about “maternal instinct,” we risk sending the message that good parents just know what to do and feel the right things right away. The research tells a more complicated — and more hopeful — story: Skills and feelings grow with time, practice, and support.

The Importance of a Support System

Gloria’s life circumstances, including a traumatic birthing experience and limited support at home, likely had an impact on her emotional connection with her baby. Her reaction to her situation was, in many ways, a very normal response to her reality. 

As I listened to her, I found myself thinking less about what was “wrong” with Gloria and more about what was happening around her. We know that external factors, including the types of concrete and social supports available to parents as well as childbirth experience, can impact parents’ mental well-being and therefore their capacity to bond with their baby. Given what she had been through, Gloria’s feelings were understandable, even if they were not what she expected.

About the importance of normalizing the diverse and often gradual process of bonding between infants and caregivers Dr. Campbell says, “How caregivers connect with and feel about their young children depends heavily on their circumstances, so it’s important to normalize their need for support. It is important to normalize that all caregivers are different and will feel different things when it comes to parenting and connecting with their children. You might have a 16-year-old for whom giving birth was a tumultuous decision. It may not have started out as the happiest day of her life, so the ways she connects with her child may look very different than a 32-year-old who has been married for years and has been working toward achieving pregnancy. What is most important is that each of these mothers has the support she needs to connect with her baby.”  

Parents, “Nothing Is Wrong with You” 

In Gloria’s case, it was important for me to normalize her feelings. I told her this was not the first time I had heard a mother say she didn’t feel connected to her baby and that this did not make her a bad parent. We talked about the many factors that might be shaping her experience — her birth, her recovery, the limited support at home — and how none of them were a reflection of her worth as a mother.

I am no longer a home visitor, but as a parent still in the early years who went through many of these same feelings two years ago, I often think about Gloria when a first-time parent friend asks some version of, “What’s wrong with me?”

In those moments, my response is similar: Nothing is wrong with you. Your experience is shaped by what you’ve been through, how supported you are, and the fact that feeling like a parent can take time.

For professionals — and for any of us who support new parents — there is an opportunity here to:

• • • • • • Reflect back the ways they are already showing up for their baby.
          • Share what we know about the parental brain — that connection often grows gradually through repeated, everyday caregiving. 
          • Help them build a network of support, including peers. 

Thelma Ramirez, EdM, is a research manager at Harvard’s EASEL Lab, where she supports the equity-focused efforts of several projects. Her research interests include family engagement in social and emotional learning (SEL), culturally responsive pedagogy, and the intersection of equity and SEL interventions — all in an effort to ensure and foster inclusive and safe learning spaces for students of all backgrounds. Prior to her work at the EASEL Lab, Ramirez served as a parent educator, infant family specialist, and home visitor trainer. Ramirez has an AB in sociology from Princeton University and an EdM in prevention science and practice from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.