What babies’ cries really tell us – and why maternal instinct is a myth

By Nicolas Mathevon, Professeur (Neurosciences & bioacoustique - Université de Saint-Etienne, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes - PSL & Institut universitaire de France), Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Étienne

The sound slices through the quiet of the night: a muffled sob, then a hiccup, quickly escalating into a high-pitched, frantic wail. For any parent or caregiver, this is a familiar, urgent call to action. But what is it a call for? Is the baby hungry? In pain? Lonely? Or simply uncomfortable? For generations, we’ve been told that understanding this primal language is a matter of intuition, a “maternal instinct” that allows a mother to divine her child’s needs. Society often reinforces this idea, creating an elite class of quasi-psychic super-parents who seem to know everything, and leaving…

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