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Comment by stvltvs | Hacker News Reader

There's a deeply ingrained mythos around how natural and easy motherhood is, but in nature, a lot of first time mothers are rather mediocre. It takes a while learn how to do all those "natural" things like nursing the baby.

And let's not forget that babies kinda suck (intended) at doing "natural" things too.

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> lot of first time mothers are rather mediocre

I had a hen who was sitting on a clutch of eggs this summer. Did everything right: kept them warm, turned them regularly, etc.

Then one hatched and she promptly lost interest in the rest, leaving them to die.

I worked lambing/kidding season at a sheep and goat (wool) ranch for several years. It quickly disabused me of any notions that natural parenting processes are always or even mostly functional at the individual level.

Sure, selective breeding accounts for part of it, but so does the reality that evolution has tended to select (for many prey animals) for the ability to survive and reproduce a lot, not necessarily the ability to be a good parent.

Some years ago we had a goat that didn't recognize her new baby was her baby, and refused to care for it. We tried for some time to see if we could get her to hold still long enough for it to latch on, but every time it tried to eat she'd take off.

Unfortunately, since she wouldn't protect it, something seemingly snatched it up in the night and we didn't see it again. It was really depressing.

It used to be that people had between six and twelve children, so all children grew up among babies learning this crucial knowledge from their parents and younger siblings. They'd end up having children within a few years of moving out, too, so there was no forgetting about it, either.

In addition, a lot of first time mothers died, as did their babies.

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