'Mom Genes' Aims To Examine Biological Transformations Of Motherhood
Abigail Tucker's descriptions of how radically women may change at the time of motherhood — and, as an extension, how this might affect their ability to focus on other things — gets pretty harrowing.
The theme of transformation is central to Abigail Tucker's Mom Genes.
When women give birth and become mothers, writes Tucker, who is a science writer and mother of four, they "rebuilt from the ground up" as they undergo a "radical self-revision" that involves "a monomaniacal focus" on the baby.
Hormone and brain-based changes drive this transformation and "make a mother," she writes. New moms derive intense pleasure from their infant, experience heightened sensitivity to cues and signals coming from the baby, and are overtaken with a need to help and protect the baby at all costs.
Tucker's argument is not a subtle one: Full stop "babies occupy a special place in
