I’ve read something incredibly interesting and a little bit disturbing. Did you know that, genetically speaking, we are all walking around with our mother’s intelligence and our father’s emotions? It’s true. While our fathers bless us with the genes that regulate our limbic system (the set of structures that control much of our emotion, behavior, and long-term memory), it is our mother’s genes that control our early forebrain development.
Now, if you’re male, you only inherit your mother’s side of things, which may explain why my husband gets that panicked look in his eyes whenever I ask him how his impending fatherhood makes him feel. It is also the source of why we have had the following conversation.
Me: Honey, how are feeling now that we’re X months along?
Him: Good?
Me: Just good? Are you excited?
Him: Uh … yeah.
Me: Is there any little special thing you’re looking forward to?
Him: Like what?
Me: Like all of us lying in bed on Sundays? Drinking coffee and reading comics to each other?
Him: Ummm … I’d like to see the baby. I’m looking forward to that. That’ll be nice.
But I digress …
Reading about the origin of my intelligence, I began to question the wisdom of a system that gave me such an … interesting hand of cards to play. Now granted, I shouldn’t complain, nor should anyone! After all DNA has been doing a pretty good job of helping us replicate the species for quite a while, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?
A pregnant lady, that’s who.
Now before I continue with this latest peek into my progesterone-laced life, let me say this; my mother is super smart. She is a very accomplished, many degree having lady with an incredibly important job. She is what I call a “fancy pants.” Anything I may divulge or recount should not disillusion your image of my perfect and amazingly genius mom.
That being said, my mother once let my brother and me loose in the woods behind our house for hours. We found some old beach buckets in the garage. We then proceeded to collect rabbit poop because we thought the little pellets were beans.
