COLIN HOGG
WHAT’S WITH WOMEN AND THEIR URGE TO CONSUME CUTE KIDS? COLIN EXPLORES ONE THEORY
Isuppose it’s hardly surprising that women can be a little strange about other people’s babies. If you’ve ever given birth, I reckon you’re fully licensed to be as strange about babies as you want to, but maybe just try not to eat them.
It’ll be because I’m a man, but I really wouldn’t dream of telling any mother how “delicious” her new baby looked. On the other hand, some women don’t hold back at all on sharing those sorts of feelings.
Maybe I’m only noticing it because there are a few new babies in my life, but I keep hearing declarations from women about the deliciousness of babies, even to the point of some suggesting that they wouldn’t mind a nibble.
“I could eat her,” a woman of my acquaintance recently declared while gazing at my baby granddaughter. I had to fight the urge to put myself between the drooling auntie and the drooling child, and though I was reasonably sure my friend didn’t really mean it, I wish she hadn’t said it, or at least not in earshot of me.
Men aren’t half as tough as we look. We can’t take hearing that sort of talk and I’m not sure babies can either, so
I’d appreciate it if everyone could think twice before expressing carnivorous interests in other people’s babies, at least in front of men. I’m not exaggerating and I wouldn’t have brought the subject up at all if I hadn’t recently heard several women – including at least one of my daughters – talking about the edibility of other people’s babies.
The experts who know all about these unsettling urges say there’s little chance women will ever stop eyeing babies like they’re juicy little steaks. According to some scientists, they can’t help themselves. It’s an irresistible chemical reaction to do with the smell of babies.
Speaking as a man and from the less-evolved side of the tracks, I fully admit I like the smell of babies myself, especially the tops of their little heads, which have the soothing whiff of a lightly scented candle. But I can sniff and pass the baby on, whereas a woman might be tempted to take a little nibble. It’s because the smell of babies triggers the reward part of the female brain, releasing pleasuregiving dopamine and switching on the part of the brain that also craves certain foods.
In the presence of cute, chubby, bigeyed babies, it’s not uncommon for women to be overwhelmed by the urge to squeeze, pinch or even bite them. And, in fact, during my research into this topic, I found one of the questions most commonly asked by new mothers was, “Why do I want to eat my baby’s feet?” Now we know.
On the subject of babies’ feet, the granddaughterly pair that had recently begun pattering around our place has now trotted out our front door, heading off to start her new life with her mum and dad in another part of town. In the four months they were living with us after coming home from the US, Olive has grown from sweet and helpless to relentless adventurer.
I’m missing her already. She’s delightful, though never delicious.
‘There’s little chance women will stop eyeing babies like they’re juicy steaks’