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All that she wants is a (nother) baby'? Longing for children as a fertility incentive of growing importance

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The article discusses the existence and outlook of an evolved desire to have children. Twin studies have found a genetic basis for conscious attempts to get pregnant. This heritable disposition increasingly affects societies of wide female reproductive choice (Kohler et al 1999). Based on 106 stories written by Finnish women in 2006, I analyse the symptoms, triggers and behaviour related to longing for babies. I suggest that a strong longing for first or subsequent children is an affective incentive of growing importance in low-fertility societies. Female desire for babies appears in two main forms: as part of a generally care-oriented personality and as a sudden, surprising and largely physical longing. The first type conforms to previous research on nurturing (Miller 1986; Foster 2000) while the second type has not been much studied yet. For both types, a desire to have children is often related to physical age, falling in love, previous pregnancies and to exposure to babies of kin and peers. I discuss evolutionary explanations and suggest that longing for babies may have evolved not only as a by-product of finding care pleasurable, but also as part of mate selection and as a consequence of hormonal changes induced by couple formation and ageing.
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... Another case could be stepparental investment as a signaling effort, e.g., to earn reputation in one's social network in social contexts where stepparental investment is highly encouraged by social norms. Finally, if one considers that many individuals display a desire to have and care for childrena desire that itself may be an evolved motivation (Foster 2000;Rotkirch 2007)stepparenting may be one way to fulfill this desire, especially for individuals unable to have biological children. ...
... Social contagion is the process in which preferences are shaped through emotional states rather than explicit learning [17]. For example, increased broodiness after having been around (cute) children [18,19]. A third mechanism is social support: family and friends can provide emotional, instrumental or financial support that facilitates fertility behaviour [11,16,[20][21][22]. ...
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... Also, a third child is likely to change both sibling dynamics and parent-child interactions due a larger age span between the children and the outnumbering of their parents. Last, theories based on evolutionary psychology have suggested that the mere exposure to babies -even for women who are already mothers -may induce a "baby longing," and hence increase fertility (Rotkirch 2007). ...
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