Fresh Take: Elizabeth Preston on What Animals Have to Teach Us About Parenting

0:00Amy, let me tell you about a magical place that is so exactly designed to be enclosed space, year-round fun for the whole family, that I bet you already know what I'm going to say before I even say the name. Let's say it together on three. One, two, three. Great Wolf Lodge. You got it, Amy. My kids loved Great Wolf Lodge when we went. You probably already know that it has a huge indoor water park with a wave pool, Lazy River, a bunch of massive water slides. But then your pack can hit the other attractions because, wait, there's more. Great Wolf Lodge has adventure-packed attractions like MagiQuest, a live-action game kids can play throughout the lodge, plus the Northern Lights Arcade.

0:44Spent some quality time there, so your kid who loves the Lazy River and your kid who loves fantasy games will both have a great time. Great Wolf Lodge also offers great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties. All under one roof. Unpack the car once and you're settled in to have fun. And with 22 lodges across the country, you're always a short drive away from adventure. We've both had such great times at Great Wolf Lodge, so bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more at greatwolf.com and strengthen the pack. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell?

1:21Laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. Today we're talking to Elizabeth Preston. She is a science journalist who contributes regularly to the New York Times and has written for Science, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, and others. She is also the mother to two daughters, currently ages six and nine. Today we'll be talking about Elizabeth's Just Out book, The Creature's Guide to Caring, How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. So as is true for so many of our guests, the birth of your first child brought about a sea change that then kind of led to this book.

2:01So tell us about that. Yeah, I mean, having a kid puts you into a whole other universe. It feels like a parallel universe almost, right? You're like, I was living my regular life and now I'm in the same world, but everything is different. You kind of have a fresh lens on everything. So as a science journalist, some of the things that really interest me are animal behavior. And we are animals, of course, we like to, we like to try to forget that sometimes, but we are. And it's hard to ignore when you have a child, right? You feel very much like an animal birthing a child, dealing with all of a baby's needs.

2:40And another thing that really interests me as a writer is evolutionary biology. How did we and other species arrive historically at where we are today? The things that we do, the ways we behave and interact with each other and survive, how did we settle on those solutions as the best way to live? One of the things that struck me immediately, having had three kids is that feeling. I feel like you see people having babies, you know, babies exist. And then I had a baby right around the World Series. My first son was born. And I remember watching the World Series and being like, how are these crowds of people there?

3:20They must have never had babies. Like, it feels like you're the first person to ever do it, that no one else could have had this experience. Because I remember being in childbirth and thinking, there's no way people survive this. It's just all the emotions of giving birth to an infant and all the physicality of it for me felt like, wow, I had no idea. I heard about this, but this is really different. Does that experience resonate with you? Totally. And I think in the book, I kind of wanted to expand that and say, not just is it like, whoa, other people did this and like did it more than once voluntarily and No one really conveyed to me how hard it was and how crazy it is.

4:01But also, all these other animals, all these other species are also giving birth. And to be clear, most animals on Earth don't really care for their young. They lay an egg under a leaf. They walk away. They swim away. Whatever. They're done. But animals throughout the animal kingdom, all different kinds of animals, again and again have evolved ways of caring for their young. So I wanted to say, what can we learn from looking at all those different ways that animals have come up with solutions to the same problems that I have now, which is keeping another animal alive and also keeping myself alive and sane?

4:38And as you say, the animal kingdom, they do it without apps and podcasts and advice. I mean, we are thinking of starting a podcast just for animal parents, but we're just still in the developmental stages. That would just be hard to sell ads on that one. Yeah. And that's on top of it, right? Like this is supposed to come so naturally to me and I'm finding it hard and a chimpanzee does not. I mean, was that part of what prompted you to look further into it? Yeah, it feels so hard and yet everyone else does it and all these animals do it. So why does it feel so hard? Part of what I came to realize is that a lot of researchers now agree that humans evolved is what's called cooperative breeders.

5:23So breeder is kind of like a rude word to apply to ourselves. But that means that they think historically, our human ancestors, they weren't raising kids as just a mom and a dad in their little cave or their shelter or whatever. And like the breadwinner and the homemaker and the babies. That wasn't the model. The model was more communal. It was more, you know, it's a cliche now to say it takes a village, but also researchers think historically that was true. And that's how we survived. And the village wasn't necessarily like a lot of, you know, neighbors, other people. A lot of it might have been your own children who are older, caring for their younger siblings, having a more active role in the home.

6:03But so if it feels extra hard for a human parent today to raise kids, maybe part of that is because the model that we're trying to follow is not natural for our species. That's what surprised me reading this book. I expected this book to be, we need to parent more like manatees. But the actual book is sort of like, we are manatees. It's just a little bit different. And the problem is that we think that we're not right and that we've drifted away from the way that this needs to go. Right. We kind of are trying to solve a problem that we created, which is we've made this ideal of parenting. And when I say we, I mean, I'm speaking from a Western perspective.

6:42Certainly other cultures might be are doing it differently and have their own ideas and aren't watching the same people on Instagram that I am and rolling their eyes. But if it feels so hard, you know, it's because this ideal we've created isn't natural and we consume more and more media and buy more and more products to try to fix this problem of how hard it is to raise our kids when we created the problem by isolating ourselves in our homes. You used the example in the book of Jane Goodall studying chimpanzees. Yeah, Jane Goodall, when she was studying the chimpanzees, she had her first baby.

7:20They nicknamed the baby Grub, which I don't totally get. It's not like a mammal. It doesn't seem related to the chimps. Baby nicknames are weird. They've always been weird. But she was watching these chip mothers and she realized, you know, they were in close contact all the time and they did a lot of nursing all the time. And my understanding is at that time in England, this was not fashionable to be like breastfeeding on and on and on. But she was like, maybe I should try it more like the chimp. Maybe that's more natural. The chimpanzee is an interesting example because really the chimp mother is not very much like a human mother.

7:55The chimpanzee mother gets no help from a father, not really any help from the group. She's pretty much on her own with that baby. That's true of the other great apes, the chimps, the bonobos, the gorillas. And what that means is that they can't afford to have their babies very close together. They breastfeed for years and years and then they have to take a long time before they can have another baby. because it's so resource-intensive. You tell us that our cerebral caretaking architecture is ancient, and this is the part that we share with the animal kingdom. So I wanted to break down a little bit what that architecture is and how, as you argue, it does kind of snap into place once we have the newborn in our presence.

8:40Tell us about that. Yeah, a lot of that research is ongoing, so people are finding out new things about this all the time. First of all, the hormones that affect our brains and tell us to care for the baby, these are very ancient. Even something like prolactin, which has the word lactin in it sounds like milk because it was named after milk. And it tells a human mother's body to make milk, to let down milk. It comes from fish. Fish have the same thing. And in fish, it's not the moms who use it. It's the dads. Because most caretaking parents in fish are dads. They're not moms at all. So they kind of invented prolactin, this hormone.

9:16So that's one piece of it. And then another piece is in the brain. One area that researchers have discovered again and again is very important. I'm pointing at my head, but that's not, you can't see it in there. It's way deep inside in the hypothalamus, which is kind of in the middle of your brain, deep in there. It's a control center. And in the hypothalamus, there's this area called the MPOA. And it seems to be really, really important for caretaking in humans, in other animals, other mammals like mice. And then even when you go really far away in the evolutionary tree, like to frogs, you see that same brain region is important when the frogs do their caretaking.

9:57So that's telling us, you know, we didn't invent, we didn't invent what we're doing. We made modifications to what was already there. And there's this very deep, very ancient, conserved, caring architecture in the brains of animals. You say in the book that the MPOA is what makes us think a baby's head smells amazing, a newborn baby. And clearly that's particularly the case for the mother and the father. But it's kind of also true for anybody that comes to visit a newborn, like, oh my God, they smell so good. So is the MPOA kind of activated in anybody who's around a newborn baby to some extent?

10:33So anybody who visits a newborn, like you said, usually loves them. The reason for that might have to do with our history as a species, because we didn't just evolve for like the chimpanzee mom to be the only one. We evolved for the broader community to be helping to care for the baby. So the theory is that everyone's human brain has this caring architecture kind of unlocked. In something like a chimpanzee, it gets unlocked in a mother by the act of birthing that baby, maybe. But if you're something like a human, maybe it can be unlocked just by being around a baby. You experience the sensory input of the baby, the cries, the smells, and your caring brain gets activated.

11:16There was a really cool study more than 10 years ago that looked into this by comparing the brains of heterosexual couples and gay male couples. And they found that the activity of those brains was very, very similar in the mothers and the gay male parents. The idea being that when you were the primary caretaker for the baby, and so these were moms who weren't, they didn't have like stay-at-home dad partners, I don't think. The idea was it was a more typical or more stereotypical relationship where the mom was the primary caretaker. And so the conclusion was that the activity in the brain matches the job that you're doing.

11:53So if you're playing the role of primary caretaker to the baby, just being around the baby activates what you need to do, activates that caring architecture, whoever you are and whatever your relationship to the baby or your sex. We're talking to Elizabeth Preston. She is the author of The Creature's Guide to Caring and we'll be right back. Amy, let me tell you about a magical place that is so exactly designed to be enclosed space, year-round fun for the whole family, that I bet you already know what I'm going to say before I even say the name. Let's say it together on three. One, two, three. Great Wolf Lodge.

12:35You got it, Amy. My kids loved Great Wolf Lodge when we went. You probably already know that it has a huge indoor water park with a wave pool, Lazy River, a bunch of massive water slides. But then your pack can hit the other attractions because wait, there's more. Great Wolf Lodge has adventure packed attractions like Magi Quest, a live action game kids can play throughout the lodge. Plus the Northern Lights Arcade spent some quality time there. So your kid who loves the Lazy River and your kid who loves fantasy games will both have a great time. Great Wolf Lodge also offers great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties.

13:12All under one roof. Unpack the car once and you're settled in to have fun. And with 22 lodges across the country, you're always a short drive away from adventure. We've both had such great times at Great Wolf Lodge. So bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more at greatwolf.com and strengthen the pack. Quince has totally become my go-to. It's that in-between weather right now in New York City. And I just got Quince's shorter length trench coat, cotton, a little bit of stretch. Makes me look super polished when I throw it on. I just find that Quince's pieces are the ones in my closet that I wear over and over.

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14:45Elizabeth Preston:Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit Progressive.com. Find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Elizabeth, you also talk about the amygdala, which we have been talking a lot on the podcast recently about the amygdala, usually in talking about anxiety and not so great ways that our amygdala gets activated.

15:29But you say that the amygdala is actually part of the parental care system in our brains. Tell us why that is. That's right. The amygdala does have to do with anxiety and it's involved in fear and also recognizing fear in others and anticipating how another individual would react to something scary. So there was one really interesting study about the importance of the amygdala to caretaking. And in this study, it was on rats. And normally when a rat is scared, it will freeze. And so scientists trained it with a little shock to its feet in its cage. It doesn't harm it, but it's a common way to train mice, rats and mice for a certain reaction.

16:08So they taught these rats that anytime they smelled a peppermint smell in their cage, there was about to be a shock to their feet. And so the rats learned that at any time they smelled peppermint, they would freeze. But the researchers found that when they did this with a rat mom, if her pup was in the cage, she smelled the peppermint and she did not freeze. She was like, it's go time. And she started caring for the pup. She started grooming the pup. If the pup was very young, she even started to shove the material in the cage, like the bedding material toward the pipe that the smell was coming out of, like she was trying to barricade herself against this threat.

16:46But when the researchers blocked oxytocin, which is a hormone you've probably talked about, it has to do with bonding and connections and love. When they blocked oxytocin from reaching the rat's amygdala, she did not act this way. She froze. She didn't have that urge to protect and care for the pup in the case of a threat. And you say the amygdala grows after childbirth, which was super interesting to me as someone who really struggled with postpartum anxiety, like I've always been a somewhat anxious person. But after having three kids, I became problematically anxious. And I was like, Oh, and obviously, I talk a ton about my amygdala with people helping me with this problem.

17:30But that it kind of starts to overfire. I mean, And I just I was the rat that like everything was peppermint. You know, I was just trying to fix everything all the time. And I thought that was really interesting. Is that like connected to the amygdala? I mean, not exactly. In my case, I'm not asking you to diagnose me. But I mean, that center of awareness and anxiety around your offspring, it seems natural that it goes up after childbirth. But it was also interesting to me that it's physical. Right. Right. There is definitely research showing that there's more vigilance in a mother's brain right after the baby is born.

18:10You're more heightened. You're more attentive. You're attuned. You're waiting for that cry from the bedroom. Right. And it can feel hard to turn that off. So I do wonder how much of that gets baked in to your brain. It's interesting because I'm somebody who faints when I see blood, which is problematic when I have to have blood taken or whatever. And I feel bad about it in myself, you know, and I had to have a friend explaining to me, like, you are not in control of this. This is an involuntary response. Similarly, that a mother is like overthinking things. She has the baby blues, whatever. I think we still do sort of frame it as a weakness or a failing on the part of the parent instead of her amygdala has grown, right?

18:48Or her, what is the part of the brain? The MOA, MPOA. Her MPOA is activated. These are processes that are involuntary and universal. It's not about you need to, you know, take a warm bath. These processes are larger than we are. Right, right. More self-care is the answer. Right. Have the rats thought of getting a massage? Exactly. Yeah, they just need to chill out, get a massage. No, one thing I thought was really interesting, a broader takeaway from the book, is that the idea of a mom brain, you know, it's so patronizing to say like, oh, mom brain. I mean, we say it about ourselves, but it's still patronizing.

19:24You know, like, oh, I forgot whatever at home. I have mom brain. And we do have probably too many things we're trying to hold in our memory at once. But when researchers have looked for an effect of, say, having being pregnant or having a baby on your cognition, they don't find that moms are dumb or especially forgetful. Oh, they don't? It's not a real thing. But we feel that way, maybe because we've been told to expect it. You know, know, we've been told you're going to have mom brain, you're going to be all fuzzy. And what does happen in the brain is it shrinks a little bit, but they think it's not a bad thing.

20:02So they found that the gray matter on the outside of your brain, women can lose something like almost 5 % of that volume during pregnancy. And they think it might be similar to what happens in adolescence when our brains, they've got all these kind of overgrown neural connections. We start to prune them back. And that's thought to be a preparation for adulthood and for maturity. And so researchers have suggested calling this phase of life matrescence. So becoming a mother is like a second adolescence. Also, they found that the brain largely grows back, that volume that it lost. So don't worry.

20:38That's good. And they found that in middle age and older age, there seems to be a protective effect of having had children, that the brains of mothers look a little bit younger than the brains of people who never had kids. And when you have more kids, your brain looks even a little bit younger. And they found the same effect, although to, I think, a smaller degree in dads. So they're thinking that maybe it has to do with all of the constant learning that you have to do when you're a parent. You're constantly adapting, you're figuring new things out. And when we learn things, it builds neural connections in our brain.

21:14And so there's a thought that parenting is intrinsically an enriching activity, kind of like the toy in the mouse cage. It's a constant puzzle and challenge, and that's actually healthy for our brains and helps us maintain brain volume as we age. One of the things we talk a lot about with kids as we talk about parenting is, hey, this is happening for a reason. It is a biological imperative that a toddler pulls back on the amount of foods they eat because we constantly, you know, you talk to your mom and, oh, my kid eats everything. And the kid's, you know, 14 months old. I'm like, give it a year and come back to me.

21:50But the reason we talk about biological imperatives is because it's often comforting that people tend to individualize their children and say, oh, no, my child has stopped eating because of something I did as a bad parent. And that when you are able to say that something is a biological imperative. It's like, this is happening for a reason that is way bigger than your particular choices. And I think as a mom, we don't have that conversation a lot about the biology of motherhood. And so that in my particular situation, I'm like, oh, I'm one of those people who went crazy after having a child. And now I'm an idiot who can't stop checking if the door is locked 400 times a day and my OCD is out of control because I am crazy.

22:44It's amazing to ground it in the bigger biological picture. And I feel like that's a conversation we don't have enough with moms. Right. Yeah. We tend to blame everything on ourselves. And that's kind of the same individualistic thinking that says moms should be doing everything themselves. Moms should be raising the kid themselves. It's your responsibility for the kid to turn out a certain way, your responsibility to keep yourself sane and healthy and not have too many needs. But really, biology says that we do have needs, and we can't really control what we need. And that if we had more support from our communities, maybe that would all feel a little more in balance.

23:24The other lie we tell ourselves that the science bears out its faults is that the mom is uniquely capable of providing for a baby. I was just discussing this with my husband after reading this book. Well, mothers are like uniquely able. I'm like, no, they're not. They're our dad brains. And so let me quote Elizabeth Preston to you, sir. And he said, what about lions? I'm like, okay, what about fish though? So let's talk about you're sowing discord seeds in Amy's marriage. Right. I love it. So tell us about the parents' brains and how this idea that only mommy is maybe not what the animal kingdom shows us.

24:00Yeah, some really interesting research on that subject has happened in the poison frogs. So these are animals. I know we're nothing like a frog, right? But it's really interesting to look. I'm just picturing Amy's husband dressed as a poison frog. What about the poison frogs, I said? Exactly. Yeah. Poison frogs are interesting because, you know, most frogs, they just lay their eggs in the water and then the eggs hash to tadpoles. The tadpoles swim around and it's fine. Poison frogs live in the rainforest. So it's more dry. they're not in the water. And when they lay their eggs, they lay their eggs like on a leaf on land.

24:34And that's okay for the egg. But when the tadpole hatches, a tadpole is basically a little fish, right? So it has to be in water. So the poison frogs need to care for the tadpole because they need to move the tadpole into water after it hatches. Otherwise it'll dry up and die. So this is the trade-off they made when they evolved to live in trees in the rainforest instead of in a pond is that now they have to move their babies when they hatch. So they have to pay attention to the eggs. They have to watch and see when they hatch. And then once they hatch, they have to carry the tadpoles into water.

25:08Sometimes they can do this all at once. Sometimes they have to carry the tadpoles one at a time because the tadpoles are cannibals and they will eat each other. Oh, tadpoles. We thought we had it hard. Yeah. Don't eat your brother. so usually the parent that does this is the dad that's just how it shook out in the poison frogs so the dad comes over to where the tadpoles have hatched he squats down he lets the tadpoles kind of shimmy up onto his back they latch on with their faces somehow either one at a time if they're cannibals or all together if they're not and he hops around until he finds a little pool of water if it's just one tadpole it might be like a little collection of rainwater in a leaf he kicks off the tadpole.