PARENTHOOD AMONG THE HIGHER ANIMALS
THE FIXING OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT IN THE MOTHER

“The universe throbs with restless change. Everything that we know is becoming rather than being.”—P. Chalmers Mitchell

One of the difficulties that has met me in my studies of the family among the animals is that, as we ascend the scale of life, there is a moral retrogression in fatherhood—at least, that is how it appears to me. There are, as far as I have found, no examples among mammals, the highest and last group of the animal kingdom, of devoted fathers undertaking the sole charge of the young, and few where the father even shares with the mother to any extent in the work connected with the upbringing of the family. The egoistic desires seem to increase in the males, with a corresponding weakening of their interest in the family and willingness to participate in its duties. The young are carried by the mother alone, they are protected chiefly by her; the father takes no part in the nursery cares, and rarely does he help in providing food for the children. The family is maternal, the female—the mother—its centre; the male is bound sexually to the female, but apart from this his connection with the family is slight; we find him most frequently following personal interests.

In contrast with the conduct of the fathers in the families we have so far examined among the birds, reptiles, fishes and insects, with whom the father’s solicitude and[118] sacrifice for the young equals and, in some cases, rivals that of the mother, this complete paternal indifference is really very startling. It demands our attention.

What factors have brought about this reversal, which at first sight appears so strange? Why is it that the parental instinct diminishes in the father and is now fixed in the mother? It is, however, easy to understand this change if we consider what now happens, and the changed conditions under which the young are born. The mammals do not lay eggs like bird and reptile mothers, but each mother retains the eggs within her body, and so secures for the young warmth and protection far more certainly than would be possible in the best-contrived nest or home.[47] But this has led to changed habits. No nest or brooding-home has to be made, and the same preparations for the family, which hitherto have united in work the father with the mother, are unnecessary. Again, food has not now to the same extent to be collected and stored in readiness for the future needs of the children. The embryo, living within the body of its mother, gains the food for its growth directly from her blood. The connection between mother and child now is closer; her condition and health become of direct importance for the welfare of the young. At the same time the importance of the father is sharply lessened. This is plain. The early stages of mother-care, instead of being conscious and external acts regulated by special circumstances and often modified to meet different needs, now become part of the unconscious functions of the body of the mother—the child is an extension of herself. The advantage to the offspring of this[119] change from external to internal protection is great, in the added safety thereby gained from fixed functions over the habits that might be slurred over, bungled or forgotten. I think, however, that there is a corresponding loss—that parenthood becomes more possibly irresponsible and, at the same time, individualism becomes stronger. Birth, with narrowed opportunity for intelligent adaptation, is more of an unconsidered incident; I mean that before it occurs it demands much less from the parents in sacrifice and in work. This is certainly the case with the father, whose part in gaining offspring is reduced to a single momentary act, and one, moreover, that is prompted by the fiercest egoistic desire.

But I think, too, there is a deterioration, though much less in degree, in the quality of motherhood. The preparation made for the birth of her children by the mammal mother is very slight, indeed, in many cases the mother appears to be unaware of the approaching event until the actual birth begins. Here is an account of a langur monkey, whose first baby was born in the London Zoological Gardens, at which event the mother seemed to be utterly surprised. The birth took place at night, and the mother, from the marks in the cage, must have dragged up and down the new, astonishing object. But by the morning she had grown accustomed to the baby, and held it pressed closely to her breast, from time to time thrusting the head outwards and eagerly looking at it. For several weeks the baby never left her, and she showed endless curiosity and pleasure in it, ceaselessly examining it, turning it over, stroking it and keeping it clean with her hands. She was jealous of visitors, and when they came near to the cage she would turn round so as to hide the baby from[120] them. The father, in case of accidents, had been taken away and put in the adjoining cage, which was shut off by a piece of canvas. He made a hole in this, and from time to time, especially when the mother or baby made any noise, he would raise the torn flap and peep through.[48]

It must be remembered that among the mammals it is the rule for the young to be suckled by the mother, a mode of feeding already foreshadowed by many bird parents and some insects. But with them the special nursery food is prepared from their own food by incessant work, undertaken, as a rule, by both parents. The act of suckling, on the other hand, occurs without conscious work, and is a function in which the father has no concern whatever.

I have no facts to trace the steps whereby this function of maternal feeding was developed and established, but I would suggest that, apart from the advantage to the young of a special diet, the immense labour entailed on the parents in obtaining food—the foraging over wide areas and the carrying of the provisions back to the nursery—made it a question of economy; and that the mother, as more usually being with the young, was the parent who came without conscious effort to prepare for them in her body this early nourishment.

It is plain that the bond between the mother and offspring would be greatly strengthened; they would be dependent upon her alone, and drawing life from her body, she would become increasingly conscious of them during a much longer period. The emotional quality of affection really develops now. The suckling is a continuation[121] of the organic relation by which the child is born of the mother’s body; now the child exists through her, and becomes, so to speak, a habit which grows up out of her own individuality. I lay stress upon this fact: the maternal feeding is the beginning of a new period in the growth of motherhood, and is the foundation of the indestructible bond between mother and child.

We see, then, the reasons for the curious and sudden deterioration in fatherhood; the father has, as it were, been pushed out of his earlier position of service. Now that there is no nursery to be built, and the mother is the sole feeder of the young during their period of greatest helplessness, the father loses his interest in the family. Our interests and our habits are fixed by whatever occupies our attention. Freed from the first and most important care of the young, the male is severed from the family and its duties, and his attention, thus set free, turns in new directions and centres upon himself. In this connection we have, I would suggest, an explanation of the greater variability of the male as well as of his more violent passions. Instead of a working partner with the mother, sharing in her sacrifice for the welfare of the family, he is a member apart; he grows larger than the female, becomes masterful, pugnacious, jealous of her and of the young: a fighting, egoistic specialisation. He is still attached to the female, but he seeks her to satisfy his sexual needs, he less frequently remains with her as a domestic partner, relieving her in connection with the rearing of the young.[49]

[122]

This is the general condition among the mammals. It is the rule that the young are tended by the mother during the period of their youth. At birth they are usually helpless, and often are born before the eyelids have opened and while the body is yet naked, or but scantily clothed. But there are degrees of helplessness, determined, it would seem, by the conditions of the environment and habits of the parents. The maternal care is greater or less in accordance with the needs of the young. The period of youth is much longer, and increases as we ascend in the scale of life. The great apes, for instance—the gorilla, the orang and the chimpanzee—take from eight to twelve years to grow up, while baboons and common monkeys take from three to eight years, and the little South American monkeys and lemurs two to three years.[50] In connection with this longer childhood we find an increased mental growth; the years of youth are the time in which the brain cells increase in size and co-ordinate with the rest of the body. And the longer the period of youth the more perfect is the brain. Thus the helplessness of the young stands in direct relation to the increased vitality shown by the adults. It is also the strongest factor in developing and fixing the maternal instincts.

The young do not leave their mother until they are well ready to start life on their own account; then they are thrown into the world. Till then they are cared for. Freed of any duty of finding food, and very seldom having to defend themselves, they have time to experiment and learn from experience. The instincts in this way become educated, their rigidity is destroyed, and more and more they are controlled by memory and experience—the stored-up[123] results of experiment. The purpose of youth is to give time for this.

The number of the young is now very greatly reduced, and the small families are protected by the mothers, in some cases assisted by the fathers. The maintenance of the species by the production of enormous families has ceased. Some of the small rodents, it is true, breed several times in the course of the year, and there are other fecund mammals, such as pigs, which give birth to many young in one litter. But these are rare exceptions. The usual number of young is two or three at a birth, and the higher in the scale of mammalian life the smaller is the family.[51]

There is a fact that must be noted here. A curious perverted instinct is not uncommon among mammal mothers, though rare with the monkeys. In the first day or two after birth a mother will kill and eat her young. I had a bitch who once did this: the first time she had a family she ate all her puppies in the first night; afterwards (I mean when for a second time she had puppies) she was a good and fond mother. I think this habit of maternal infanticide must be connected with that change, of which I have spoken, whereby the early stages of brood-care are carried on without the direct consciousness of the mother. The children do not enter into her experience because she has not had to work for them. She eats them as she would eat any other helpless thing. In a carnivorous mother especially this habit is not surprising; it happens almost always with young and inexperienced mothers. And I think it shows that maternal care is not so instinctive as we are led to believe, but is the result of, and directly dependent upon habit and the attention being fixed on the family.

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In all the carnivores the young are born helpless, usually blind, though new-born lions can see; they remain with their mother for a period varying from a few weeks with the smaller creatures to even more than a year. Sometimes the father stays loosely attached to the family. The large predaceous creatures cover great distances in search of prey. There is, however, a stationary home lair in a well-concealed place, to which the mother always returns with food. She takes scrupulous care to keep the nursery clean, and she carefully looks to the needs of her young family, licking them with her tongue, until they are old enough to perform their own toilet or lick and clean each other. Before they are weaned they are allowed to scrape off fragments of flesh from the mother’s food, so that they may become accustomed to their future food. At the same time they are taught the elements of stalking, in play-lessons with the mother’s tail and paws. Later they are taken out by the mother, sometimes by both parents, on foraging expeditions. Family parties of lions, for instance, often have been seen by African hunters.

The fathers do little for the young families. Sometimes they afford protection in fighting and driving off enemies; it is important, however, to note that this service to the family seems to be prompted by jealousy and aggression, and must be considered as an expression of the egoistic instincts rather than connected with parental solicitude.

Among the mammals polygamy is frequent, and there are cases of the most brutal promiscuity, where the males and females unite and separate at chance meetings, without any care for the family arising in the mind of the male. Polygamous unions are especially common among species with sociable habits who live in hordes. Sociability probably[125] arises through individual weakness. Animals that are badly armed for fierce combats, and that have, besides, difficulty in obtaining food are glad to live in association. Thus the ruminants live in hordes or polygamous groups, composed of females and young subject to a male who protects them, expelling his rivals, and being a veritable chief of a band.[52]

The conditions of the nursery and early life of the young are changed necessarily by these different habits. In the first place, the ruminants are wanderers, and travel long distances in search of food and water. Thus there is no permanent home and no nursery, and the mothers make no preparation beforehand for the young. They retire for a few minutes to a thicket, where they drop the calves or lambs. Families are small, and one is the usual number at a birth. The young are not born helpless, as is the case among the young carnivores where there is a settled nursery, but are clothed, have their eyes open, and their senses are very alert. In a very short time, almost as soon as their mother has licked them clean, they are ready to follow her; and they join the herd, if the animals are gregarious. The mothers show marked affection to the young, but it would seem to be the business of the young one rather to follow and stick to the mother than for the mother, as amongst the carnivores, to take the lead in the affections. There is no real training of the young by the mother. Sometimes, if there is a herd, the males will combine to defend the group of the females and their young; but more frequently there is a family party, consisting of one or possibly two males, with their several wives and children.[53]

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Many different animals live in this manner in familial groups. The moufflons of Europe and of the Atlas, for instance, form polygamous social groups in the breeding season.[54] Among the walrus, the male, who is of a very jealous temperament, collects around him from thirty to forty females, making altogether a polygamous family sometimes amounting to a hundred and twenty individuals.[55] Again, the male of the Asiatic antelope is inordinately polygamous; he expels all his rivals, and forms a harem numbering sometimes a hundred females. It should be noted that polygamic régime does not appear to lessen the affectionate sentiment in the females towards their tyrant ............