The maternal instinct: Mother love and the search for human nature

In this dissertation I examine scientific views about the maternal instinct from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1970s in the United States. I focus on several episodes of intense discussion about the role of instincts in human behavior: The reception of Darwin and Spencer's evolutionary ideas and their integration in psychology by William James. The rise of the feminist movement and the challenge of Charlotte Perkins Gilman to evolutionary justifications of gender roles. The debate about instincts between John Watson and William McDougall. The reception of psychoanalysis and development of child analysis in the 1940s and 50s. The rise of ethology after WWII, and John Bowlby's appropriation of views about animal behavior in what he called the Ethological Theory of Attachment.;I show that the search for a female nature centered around the maternal instinct has to be understood in the context of women's fight for equality in the public and private realms. I show that scientists have not provided evidence to assert that there is a maternal instinct. Finally, I show that the search for human nature and, specifically for a female nature, is a prescriptive enterprise that aims to justify gender roles based upon men and women's natural reproductive functions.;At the end of this study I comment upon recent developments in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Here, I show how historical analysis presented in this study can illuminate recent scientific controversies and clarify persistent confusions about the maternal instinct, mother love, and human nature.