What is it about?
There are different ways of thinking about whether and who motherhood is produced: whether by evolution or by society or culture or psychology and so on. In this article, some proposals that motherhood comes from evolution through the creation of 'mirror neurons' in the brain are analysed to reveal what assumptions such claims rest on and to explain the problems of such assumptions in the widest sense. This article then demonstrates why 'mirror neurons' in neuroscience cannot work in relation to issues such as motherhood by definition and also how evolutionary psychology relies on a set of problematic assumptions.
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Why is it important?
Neuroscience is increasingly popular as a grounding for explanations about psychological, social and cultural emotions and behaviours, and this article demonstrates fundamental problems with the ways in which neuroscience is both used in such areas but also with the ways neuroscience itself proceeds.
Perspectives
Neuroscience is now so popular in both academia and in the general culture, and yet is profoundly problematic both in scientific and in political terms. Many people, both academics and more generally, are so impressed by 'scientific' claims, and feel so little able to judge them, that they are very widely accepted. I hope my article helps people to understand that you do not have to be a scientist to understand the problems with the assumptions that these claims to neuroscience rely on and most of all I hope the article helps people to understand why there are dangerous consequences to believing neuroscientific claims uncritically.
Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein
University of Reading
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Motherhood, evolutionary psychology and mirror neurons or: ‘Grammar is politics by other means’, Feminist Theory, August 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1464700115586514.
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