The “natural affection” is far from automatic. Daly and Wilson, and later the anthropologist Edward Hagen, have proposed that postpartum depression and its milder version, the baby blues, are not a hormonal malfunction but the emotional implementation of the decision period for keeping a child. (Postpartum depression as adaptation: Hagen, 1999; Daly & Wilson, 1988, pp. 61–77.) Mothers with postpartum depression often feel emotionally detached from their newborns and may harbor intrusive thoughts of harming them. Mild depression, psychologists have found, often gives people a more accurate appraisal of their life prospects than the rose-tinted view we normally enjoy. The typical rumination of a depressed new mother—how will I cope with this burden?—has been a legitimate question for mothers throughout history who faced the weighty choice between a definite tragedy now and the possibility of an even greater tragedy later. As the situation becomes manageable and the blues dissipate, many women report falling in love with their baby, coming to see it as a uniquely wonderful individual.
Hagen examined the psychiatric literature on postpartum depression to test five predictions of the theory that it is an evaluation period for investing in a newborn. As predicted, postpartum depression is more common in women who lack social support (they are single, separated, dissatisfied with their marriage, or distant from their parents), who had had a complicated delivery or an unhealthy infant, and who were unemployed or whose husbands were unemployed. He found reports of postpartum depression in a number of non-Western populations which showed the same risk factors (though he could not find enough suitable studies of traditional kin-based societies). Finally, postpartum depression is only loosely tied to measured hormonal imbalances, suggesting that it is not a malfunction but a design feature.
Many cultural traditions work to distance people’s emotions from a newborn until its survival seems likely. People may be enjoined from touching, naming, or granting legal personhood to a baby until a danger period is over, and the transition is often marked by a joyful ceremony, as in our own customs of the christening and the bris. Some traditions have a series of milestones, such as traditional Judaism, which grants full legal personhood to a baby only after it has survived thirty days.
Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature, Chapter 7
Added to diary 15 January 2018