Again and again over the past two months—at book events, on a networking phone call with an influential funder of reproductive justice and family health projects, and in conversations with friends—I’ve asked the same question: What do we mean when we talk about the Anthropocene?
I’ve gotten some puzzled looks. What does the Anthropocene have to do with the parental brain or maternal health? Stay with me.
In January, I attended the American Society of Naturalists conference in Pacific Grove, California, to be part of a panel on the legacy of eugenics, alongside incredible thinkers like evolutionary biologist Rori Rohlfs and Indigenous bioethicist Krystal Tsosie, both geneticists. I spoke about the myth of maternal instinct and how it is rooted in eugenic ideas. And I got to listen.
It was an honor to be part of this conversation, among scientists grappling with the ways racism and oppression continue to shape ecology and evolutionary biology, and especially genetics. It was a total privilege to spend a couple of days eavesdropping on people who have dedicated their professional lives to the pursuit of figuring out how the world works.
Among them was Suzanne Pierre, a microbial ecologist and biogeochemist and founder of the Critical Ecology Lab, and the question came from her: What is the Anthropocene, exactly?
Pierre gave a presentation about what it means to approach science not from the established norms of an ostensibly “objective” point of view but from her perspective as a Black and South Asian woman living in the United States, who recognizes the influence of power and societal values as variables in the framework of science.
The Anthropocene is defined as the period of time during which humans have so influenced the Earth’s ecosystems that they created a distinct geological epoch. We take it as referring to all of us—the influence of humankind generally, our very presence on Earth.
But, is that right?
Is all of humankind responsible for this dramatic global change? Or is that on those humans who have held power and created systems to extract resources as cheaply as possible, particularly fossil fuels and forced labor, and reshaped the Earth and its ecosystems?
I listened to Pierre speak in the Grace Dodge Chapel of the Asilomar Conference Grounds, scribbling notes on the back of my own talking points:
“an etiology of global change”
“Anthropogenic drivers”—so commonly accepted that trying to differentiate those drivers is seen as unscientific
science is used to codify social inventions—legal and economic frameworks are established
ideas have biological consequences
Pierre’s work is fascinating and pioneering. Much as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and her peers changed anthropology and our understanding of caregiving, Pierre is using the tools of her field to ask different questions, with different starting assumptions.
In one project, she and her colleagues are looking at the impact the transatlantic slave trade had on the island of St. Croix and how use of that extractive labor for sugarcane production has left an ecological signature there. How does the land of a former plantation compare with land where sugarcane was never grown? What is the ecological heritage of “plantation logic”?
The overarching idea is to more precisely define the human and societal factors of ecological change, how it was created and by whom. Thankfully, you don’t need to rely on my notes. You can listen to Pierre explain critical ecology, in her own words, in conversation with Alie Ward on the Ologies podcast.
Pierre’s work resonated with me, I think, because it offers a clear response to a debate that is ongoing in journalism as well, over objectivity and truth, and the starting assumptions dictated by newsroom leaders who have mostly been White and male.
Pierre is asking questions that haven’t been asked before and using the well-established tools of her profession to answer them, leading to answers that can help us change by bridging gaps in understanding that, in many cases, have been put there deliberately.
“I’m trying to kind of throw this rope across from basic science to understanding how society assembles itself, and how we can do that better, and better, and better,” Pierre told Ward.
This middle bit is important. How did we get here (not by chance) and where are we going?
This is the same approach I used in writing Mother Brain, though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as well as Pierre did. Among the questions I started with: What is maternal instinct, exactly? Where did that idea come from? And, how is this new science of the parental brain showing us something different? Then, how can we do better, and better, and better?
Pierre’s ethic is really important right now, when the information that is on the table in so many public debates either isn’t enough (we know all the benefits of paid leave, and still?) or is actively making things worse (see: every state legislature considering bills that threaten the rights and safety of transgender people). We know that human activity is changing the planet in dramatic ways that are altering the ecological future. And still?
So many of the biggest challenges around maternal and family health right now seem intractable: a sky-high pregnancy-related mortality rate that too often gets blamed on gestational parents’ weight; a mental health crisis that policymakers outright ignore; a void of affordable, accessible child care that is framed as a problem for individual parents to solve, rather than a social ill.
Pierre’s approach pushes us in a way that I hope to embrace here, as this newsletter grows, to ask better questions and pursue the answers. When the information on the table isn’t getting us anywhere, look at the table. How did we get here?
*The illustration about the eugenics panel, above, is by artist and biologist Callie Chappell, who live sketches scientific talks and shares them on social media to increase accessibility. Thanks to Kate Eisen for reading Mother Brain and inviting me to the ASN conference, for her part in organizing the panel, and for teaching me about flower traits as a window into evolution.
Mother Brain in paperback: It’s coming in September! Stay tuned.
‘The Mind-Mother Problem’: Writer Julie Phillips (The Baby on the Fire Escape) published an English translation of her essay that ran in Trouw in November, in Dutch, about Mother Brain, art and who we become. It’s really lovely:
Necessary and validating, Mother Brain confirms the changes I saw in my own life and the lives I wrote about. Conaboy tells as science the story that they told in their art: Neel’s paintings, Lessing’s fiction, Walker’s essays, Audre Lorde’s poetry about the children she raised in a lesbian relationship. It’s a story of self-creation and self-discovery, of going into the wilderness of new experience—the wilderness that arises between mother and child—and, with luck and hard work, emerging more powerful for having been so profoundly changed.
Dani Blum’s better question: What is cortisol? In Mother Brain, I write a lot about how the rhetoric we use to describe hormones is overly simplistic. Cortisol is a prime example. As Blum writes here, cortisol is the culprit we blame for lots of ills and frustrations generally labelled as stress. We think high cortisol=bad. It's just not that simple.
“Stress is not a bad word,” Dr. Gregory Fricchione told her. “Just being a living organism means that there’s going to be stress.”
Cortisol is a change agent, involved in memory, immune response, and quite literally getting out of bed in the morning. Cortisol increases exponentially during pregnancy and remains high in the very early postpartum period. It's involved in fetus maturation, labor and lactation, and it may play a role in helping people adapt to new parenthood, when they have to learn a lot, quickly.
As Sari van Anders, professor of psychology, gender studies, and neuroscience at Queen’s University in Ontario, told me, the meaning we attach to hormones becomes “cultural narrative that circulates in our societies.” Often, that rhetoric reflects more about how we think of ourselves than it does the actual function of the hormones it describes.
Eve Rodsky’s better question: What do you mean her job is “more flexible”?