How Important Is the Mother-Baby Dyad?

Families, communities, states, and nations are strengthened when adults put the needs of babies ahead of their own selfish interests. Valerie Hudson, a university distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, authored an article about this topic that was published at The Deseret News. She began her article with the following introduction. 

In this age of pervasive alienation and loneliness, it is worth remembering the root of all human connection and the template for human love: that is, the mother-child dyad. [ChatGPT defines dyad as follows: A dyad is defined as a group or pair of two individuals or units that are regarded as a pair. In sociology, it specifically refers to two individuals maintaining a significant relationship, such as a husband and wife. In psychology, it is considered the smallest social group possible. Additionally, in biology, dyad can refer to a pair of homologous chromosomes. Overall, the term encompasses various contexts where two entities interact or relate to each other.] 

That connection begins in the womb, and modern science has brought to light the many different forms in which the in utero connection manifests itself, whether in epigenetics, microchimerism or a dozen other ways. Newborns come into the world recognizing their mother’s voice and scent, and the hormones of attachment produced in both the mother and the neonate cement the bond built over nine months of pregnancy.

Arguably, all human social connections are derived, one way or the other, from this original connection of mother and baby. The dyad is, if you will, the very first human society we join. When this foundational attachment is rendered weak or insecure, or is severed, lasting damage to the child’s ability to form relationships with others may result.

That damage, in turn, may affect societal levels of trust, cooperation and fidelity, as well as societal levels of alienation, loneliness and anomie. In a sense, we – as individuals and as societies – depend on mothers to make us fit for human society.

Of course, sometimes tragic circumstances do not permit the unfolding of the mother-baby relationship, such as when the mother dies in or after childbirth. There may be other situations, such as heavy drug use by the mother, that necessitate deviation. But in general, society is founded upon healthy mother-baby attachment, and we truck with that relationship at our peril.

Hudson gives several circumstances where mothers are routinely separated from their babies. The first circumstance is mothers who give birth in prison. She describes how some nations separate mothers in prison from their babies, while other nations have special units where mothers and babies can stay together.

Hudson’s second circumstance is adoption where the mother-child bond is jettisoned when “new, amended birth certificates on which only the names of the adoptive parents are inscribed.” She describes this action as erasing the birth mother from the child’s life “as an issue of privacy, … not a necessity” and writes that it would be easy to provide “an additional line that bears her name.” She explains that some organizations quote “Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child asserts that children have the right to know who their biological parents are or were, and that every individual born should be afforded that right  under their country’s laws.”

Hudson’s third circumstance is surrogacy. She claims that “it is in the matter of surrogacy that the worst excesses of a system that devalues the mother-child bond occur.” She is a foe of surrogacy but recognizes that “there is no longer any U.S. state that bans the practice, although four states – Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska and Louisiana – thankfully have severe limitations on it.

Most other states have taken a laissez-faire approach to surrogacy, which has created mind-boggling mischief that offends even the most basic common sense. For example, obtaining a child through surrogacy has none of the guardrails and safety precautions of adoption. If you wish to adopt a child in the United States, you and every member of your household will undergo a thorough background check, and it will be required that a social worker make several home visits to evaluate the situation into which the child will be placed.

None of these checks are required in surrogacy. Predictably, convicted sex offenders and pedophiles, who would never in a million years be allowed to adopt or foster a child, are perfectly free to obtain a child through surrogacy.

Hudson discussed a case in Pennsylvania where a registered sex offender obtained a child through surrogacy. The County District Attorney recognized that there is a loophole in the law, which is “an issue ripe for review and remedy” in the state legislature. Florida legislature is considering a law to close such loopholes, but every state should raise the bar for surrogacy. However, Hudson sees a larger problem in surrogacy.

In addition to all of these serious concerns, consider also that in the Mitchell case, the mother who carried the child was completely erased; her name was not even on the state’s original birth certificate for the child….

Policy-wise, we have it all upside down: the mother of the child – the woman who carried and delivered the child – should never have been erased, and she should have had the right to demand that there be a background check of the intended parents.

The exchange of money doesn’t trump a mother’s responsibility for her child, and neither do genes. The woman who carried the child has established the child’s humanity, and her right to safeguard the child on the basis of this real, tangible relationship should be preserved, as should her right to be named on the original birth certificate as the mother of the child.

As University of Colorado law professor Jennifer Hendricks explains: “The person who gives birth to a child is that child’s initial family. She is therefore also the person who should make initial decisions about who else should join that family…. Genes alone are not enough [to] claim connection with a child.”

Neither is money sufficient to claim connection, as in the case of surrogacy. Surrogacy contracts should be made legally unenforceable, and the relinquishment of a child in surrogacy must be placed under the same legal framework as adoption….

There is no safe or ethical form of surrogacy which could be delivered by ‘better regulation’: “we need a global ban on surrogacy for all and we need it now. Children must come first.”

And it’s important to get these policy choices straight now.

Consider that Chinese scientists are hoping to create a pregnancy robot, which will carry around your pod baby and speak to it, in a simulacrum of a mother’s body and voice. There would be no mother-baby dyad at all in that case, no human connection at the beginning of life, and the erasure of the child’s mother would be effected in full. Is this really in the baby’s best interest?

A secure mother-child dyad can prevent many future problems and strengthen families, communities, states, and nations.