Today is the anniversary of my becoming a father. We are reading "The Female Brain" by Louann Brezendine, MD. I realize that motherhood is a very big deal. Sometimes, life is summarized as two needs: survival and reproduction. In our modern times, with a very large human population, people may decide that having children is not for them. In addition, specialists are understanding more about a range of sexual manifestations from normal on. We just watched an episode of "Call the Midwife" in which a young woman in her early 20's gets the courage to see a doctor since she has not begun menstruating. She learns that her body is sexually ambiguous and not typically equipped. Sad and frightening for her.
Since a person who is a father is not able to be a mother, I am glad to be reading "The Female Brain". I read about the little girl who had been provided with "unisex" toys to avoid her being imprinted with society's version of femininity but was found cuddling and comforting a toy truck:
This little girl didn't cuddle her "truckie" because her environment molded her unisex brain. There is no unisex brain. She was born with a female brain, which came complete with its own impulses. Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they're born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values, and their very reality.
I learned about the female body's preparation for motherhood:
These physical cues from the infant forge new neurochemical pathways in the brain that create and reinforce maternal brain circuits aided by chemical imprinting and huge increases of oxytocin. These changes result in a motivated, highly attentive, and aggressively protective brain that forces the new mother to alter her responses and priorities in life. She is relating to this person in a way she has never related to anyone else in her life. The stakes are life and death.
I was happy to be part of a new family but I just learned about Couvade syndrome, where some expectant fathers even develop symptoms mimicking morning sickness.
