Coming Soon: Programmable Moms

It is possible to hit a switch to change women from bad mothers to good ones.

Scientists have discovered a way to identify bad mothers through their brain patterns. This research could be used to prevent bad mothers from having children in the first place, but we could also fix-up our out-dated mom models in order to get the best parenting experience.

Researchers at the Richmond University in Virginia discovered neurons which develop during pregnancy and become activated at birth. The more of these neurons that are activated, the more maternal a woman will be.

Professor Craig Kinsley told the Times that the behaviour of bad mothers is out of their power:

“We are all a slave to our brain function. An abusive mother has something malfunctioning in the brain so, in that respect, her behaviour is beyond her control. But it’s not a question of whether we excuse a certain behaviour. The aim of our research is to identify brain malfunctions so we can work towards fixing them.”

Scientists at Yale University are looking at the correlation between activity in certain regions of the brain and inadequate parenting. This includes serious cases of neglect and killing kids, so though the definition of  bad mother is controversial, this probably fits most people’s bill.

“Bad mother brain scanning could provide a means of targeting and working with ‘high-risk’ mothers in order to prevent abusive patterns of behaviour before they even started,” said Professor James Swain from Yale.

Of course the problem with providing high risk mothers with additional assistance is that their children will still be at risk, unless they are under 24 hour surveillance. The other option is to mess with their brains, switching on the maternal neurons.

Mothers who didn’t get their brains scanned after giving birth would be negligent, running the risk that they might not be up to scatch.

But what happens if your mother is just ok, if she hugs you good night but forgets to make your lunch sometimes? Could you drag her to the doctor so she could be engineered into Carol Brady?

And of course, if you do have the perfect parent, you can’t thank her as she had nothing to do with it. Her actions are beyond her control. Neurologists will receive bagfuls of fan mail on Mother’s Day.

Further development into this area will help men turn their unruly women into Stepford Moms. The next logical step is obviously identifying the neurons that make for a good wife.