The Myth of Normal 135

time, and for months thereafter, her needs for contact exceed those of the infant.”[6] Good thing, too: Were there not built-in physiological and emotional incentives for the ones doing the caregiving, parenthood would be even more of a slog than it already is. Fewer babies would have their survival needs met if fulfilling those needs were not rewarding for parents. With its usual brilliance, our interpersonal-biological makeup dictates that our requirements be mutual. (One of the unfortunate impacts of our culture’s way of doing things is that stress tends to whittle down these innate rewards, making parenting more frustrating and daunting than it rightly ought to be.) The poet Adrienne Rich expressed the profound joys of this reciprocal design: “I recall the times when, suckling each of my children, I saw his eyes open full to mine, and realized each of us was fastened to the other, not only by mouth and breast, but through our mutual gaze: the depth, calm, passion, of that dark blue, maturely focused look. I recall the physical pleasure of having my full breast suckled at a time when I had no other physical pleasure in the world except the guilt-ridden pleasure of addictive eating.”[7] Neurobiologically, Rich was right on target. On imaging studies, a baby’s smile will light up the same reward areas in the mom’s brain activated by junk foods or addictive drugs, releasing the same pleasure chemicals and triggering the same high.[8] Nature, that unscrupulous drug-pusher.[*] Like all complex brain structures, mammalian bonding systems—whether of whales or chimps or rats or humans—are experience-dependent for their development and activation. For the brain circuits of nurturing to function— to “come on line,” as it were—the environment must evoke and then sustain them. Both men and women have latent child-nurturing circuits in their brains, “waiting for the right environment to amplify their potentials,” in the words of neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp—he of the PANIC/GRIEF, PLAY, and CARE nomenclature. Dr. Panksepp identified and mapped the specific brain centers, circuits, connections, and associated neurochemicals that choreograph what he called “the enchanting ballet of emotions between a mother and her infant.” These include chemical messengers such as vasopressin, oxytocin, and endorphins—the body’s natural opiates—all of which awaken in parents nurturing habits that are essential to the survival of