While this is some pretty controversial and not-yet-fully-fleshed-out information, if your mom is a total asshole, this might solve a few mysteries for you! Researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York have been studying female mice with babies for clues as to what activates the maternal instinct, and found they’re primarily triggered by the ER alpha levels in the preoptic area of the brain. The level of this specific estrogen receptor is produced genetically in both mice and humans at individual levels, and is even being cited as the reason for some women’s “biological clocks” working overtime while others are basically just cheap, broken McDonald’s Happy Meal watches.
When scientists surpressed these ER alpha levels in the mice’s brains, they observed that the mouse moms spent less time licking, nurturing and caring for their progeny, not even bothering to protect them from predators. One of the lead researchers asserted that “without this gene, the skills to be ‘a good mom’ [are] lost.” Interestingly, in addition to somehow acquiring a tiny cigarette and thimble of Chardonnay and essentially morphing into rodent Betty Drapers, the mice with decreased ER alpha levels also showed less interest in sex.