Thursday, December 13, 2007

Smart Babies + Flexible Mamas = Sweet Reward

And you thought all those saintly mothering moves were going unnoticed? The best bites of buttered toast topping tiny tongues? The perennial postponement of peeing? Turns out that babies favor doers of good deeds from infancy. In a recent Yale study, 6 month olds and 10 month olds favored "helper" shapes over "mean" shapes. Way to go, babeez.

Speaking of mothering moves, apparently women's lower backs curve differently than men's to compensate for our giant pregnant selves (and beer bellies, no joke, should we head in that direction postpartum). Read the whole article (Why Pregnant Women Don't Tip Over) for an amusing lowdown on the work of Harvard and UTexas anthropologists isolating differences between male/female and human/chimp spines.

Finally, why not make gumdrop Christmas trees? You might want to find an alternative to the styrofoam (gasp) cores, but they are super cute and they will keep your kids from gnawing on their lead-laden stocking stuffers.

2 comments:

Melanie said...

Before I clicked over to that study, I was like, "What's does a 'helper shape' look like? A bag of money? Pills?" Interesting article, and it only gives support to my theory that babies can detect an assh*le a mile away.

Also, cute gumdrop trees! I've been pining for one of those little silver gumdrop trees with the dish underneath.

JessTrev said...

Thanks for coming on over, Melanie. I really need to get all my friends to read BeanPaste, it makes me howl with laughter reliably. Yup, babies are sooo smart. Smart enough to figure out who is NOT going to push them down hills at least. And I've been thinking some stiff homemade playdough ought to hold the center of the gumdrop trees...