Alloparenting

This first dreamy year of Hannah’s life is drawing to a close. I have, against my strong protestations, taken another postdoc. I am reminded of my friend Neil, the day that I insisted to him that Science and I were through, protesting that Science is like a mean boyfriend. You catch him in bed with Religion and swear that’s it’s over. But sooner or later, Science comes back and promises that this time it will be different. He gives you some good data and flowers, and you say this time, this time I can fix Science, and we will be happy.  And you start a new project and are in the honeymoon phase and everything’s good for about six months. It’s true. I’m a caricature.

This means that I have one more week to savour the morning naps, milk bottle cuddles, and afternoon outings to the zoo. It also means that I have to find Hannah a day care. Predictably, I have spent quite a bit of time on Google learning how to find a good day care or day home, and working to justify my decision to suddenly let a stranger take over a good portion of Hannah’s parenting. Because when I state the dilemma like that, it’s impossible to not feel like a bad mother. However, in my heart of hearts I don’t feel like that’s fair. I don’t believe that there’s only one good way to raise a child – either as a stay at home mom or as a working mom. Is this  false dichotomy that we’ve constructed?

Proponents of having the mother raise her children on her own often state that for most of human history, parenting has been an almost exclusively maternal affair. But in fact, this may be an oversimplification, and the maxim “it takes a village to raise a child” is not solely a trite saying. Sarah B. Hrdy, in the preface to the book “Substitute Parents: biological and social perspectives on alloparenting” argues that the matricentric imperative may be based on a limited view of human, and even primate history. In hunter-gatherer societies it is often impossible for a mother to provide for the caloric needs of even one child, and thus the father and other members of the community are required to contribute to meeting the needs of infants of the group. This type of altruism has been hard to justify evolutionarily, and is usually examined with the rule of kin selection, developed by William Hamilton. This rule simply states that the benefit accrued to an individual by an altruistic act must outweigh the costs, with benefit usually defined in terms of genetic relatedness. Hrdy argues that in social species there are benefits not defined by genetic relatedness, such as admittance to the group, or practice gained by an inexperienced female (Hrdy,2009. Allomothers across Species, across Cultures, and through Time. In: Substitute Parents. Bentley and Mace, Eds.). In fact, she argues, human history was more likely marked by community involvement in parenting than the strong individualism that is often expected of mothers (Hrdy, Meet the Alloparents. Natural History Magazine, April 2009).

While there may be evidence suggesting that alloparenting has been a human tradition, it says nothing about whether modern day care, with its institutional basis and run by strangers outside of the immediate social group of the family, is good for small kids. In this, the data are conflicting, and predictably, the quality of the day care is extremely important. In general, data shows that kids who go to day care do experience more day-to-day stress, as measured by blood cortisol (Vermeer and van IJzendoorn, 2006, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21:390), and time spent in day care can be associated with problem behaviours as older children. However, when socioeconomic status, day care quality, and personality of the child are accounted for, time spent in day care becomes less relevant to predicting future behaviour (Murrell et al. 2009. The Open Studies Family Journal. 2:40). Alternatively, some authors have shown that language can be enhanced by day care, especially for children whose home life may not be sufficiently nurturing. (Belsky et al. 2007. Child Development, 78:681).

Day cares are also associated with an increase in infectious diseases experienced by children. While irritating, to say the least, for children and parents, there is evidence that in fact the exposure to common childhood ailments may protect from the incidence of asthma, allergies, and other autoimmune disorders as the child gets older. This phenomenon is termed the hygiene hypothesis.  Researchers noted that concommitant with the decrease in infectious diseases in the Western world has been an alarming increase in asthma, especially, but also other autoimmune diseases. Intriguingly, children who grow up on farms, specifically those with livestock, show a marked reduction in the development of asthma. Further research has shown that the level of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (molecules in the bacterial cell wall that are particularly potent to your immune system) in the home environment is inversely related to the development of allergies (Reviewed in: Martinez, F.D. 2001, Respiratory Research, 2:129). Theoretically, the exposure to bacteria trains the immune system on how to interact with the environment, and in the absence of these signals, the immune system is more likely to be hyperreactive. You don’t have to raise pigs to be subject to the protective effect of low-level bacterial exposure: research on children in the Denver area has shown that kids whose homes have higher levels of bacterial lipopolysaccharide show less sensitization to local allergens (Reviewed in: Martinez, F.D. 2001, Respiratory Research, 2:129).

Do day cares provide a positive immune experience for children? Again, the evidence is contradictory. While children without a family history of asthma who spent time in day care were less likely to develop the disease by the age of six (Celedon, J. et al. 2003. Am. J. Respiratory and Critical Care Med. 167: 1239) the protective effect of day care was not demonstrated in kids at the age of eight (Caudri D. et al. Am. J. Respiratory and Critical Care Med. 180: 491). Most intriguingly, however, day care attendance was correlated with a sharp decrease in the development of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, again due to the protective effect of exposure to common infections (Ma, X. et al. 2002. British Journal of Cancer, 86:1419).

All this is running through my head as I await phone calls from other mothers who I contacted as references for my preferred day home. Hannah and I visited Cutie Pie Day Home, only a few blocks from home, on Thursday. The day home provider welcomed Hannah with warm smiles and lots of toys and chatter. Two girls from the group came by to give Hannah more toys, smiles, coos, and endless games of peek-a-boo. Hannah beamed. The woman conducting the interview asked me if I had found it stressful looking for a suitable day home, and I said no, I was finding it okay. And I was, until she asked me. Then I suddenly found myself hoarse and blinking. The thought of putting Hannah in day care was completely intellectually acceptable, until I found a job I could accept and a day home I found suitable, and suddenly, the reality of only one more week of lazy days with my little girl seemed overwhelming.

I know my little girl, and believe that the increased social interaction and immune challenge (typical microbiologist) will be good for her. This might be the only way that she learns that cats do not meow with a Scottish accent, as mommy and daddy insist, and that not every little girl has a toy called p-orbitals. I know also that being back in the work force will be good for me, giving me the challenge and interaction that I’ve been missing for the last year. But these dreamy days with my little girl I will always cherish, and I hope she does too.