The act of mothering - by mother or another - shapes our brains and our nature

Program Title: WINGS #37-20 Mothering Is a Gift
Description: Talk by Genevieve Vaughan, at the 2016 conference of the Mothering Institute for Research and Community Involvement in Toronto. Vaughan demonstrates that the act of mothering is unilateral gift-giving, and that an infant's experience of being mothered (whether by biological mother or other) builds both the physical brain and the template of what it is to be human. She further asserts that the entire exchange economy is parasitic on a more fundamental gift economy that continues unacknowledged in most societies today.

Host(s): Frieda Werden
Featured Speakers/Guests: Genevieve Vaughan's 2015 book is titled The Gift in the Heart of Language: The Maternal Source of Meaning. Other works include For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Free/Not Free, and the anthology Women and the Gift Economy. Cameo from video of neurobiologist Dr. Allan Schore is included in the speech.

Credits: Recorded and produced by Frieda Werden.

Comments: Slightly modified from original version.