Research by a UTS doctoral student in Education challenges the idea that women have a maternal 'instinct'. Cathrine Fowler believes that some women's 'natural' ability to mother is in fact the result of incidental learning of which they may be unaware.

"I don't think the idea of maternal 'instinct' is helpful to mothers," said Ms Fowler. "It is more productive for the gaining of maternal knowledge to be constructed as learning from experience. Some girls learn useful, healthy behaviours from nurturing adults. Others lack such role-models, and can therefore lack mothering skills or even learn abusive behaviour."

Ms Fowler conducted interviews with fifteen first-time mothers during their pregnancies, around a month after they gave birth, and again when their babies were six to nine months old. Four of the study group were midwives.

"When the women, including the midwives, spoke about their experiences of pregnancy and motherhood, a common refrain was 'Why didn't anyone tell me it would be like this?'" said Ms Fowler, who manages the Education and Research Unit for the Tresillian Family Care Centres.

"One possible reason why women feel unprepared for motherhood is because our language does not adequately convey common meaning for maternal experiences. For example, women are often told that when their baby first moves in the womb, it will feel like butterflies. What does this mean?

"Another reason why maternal knowledge can be difficult to develop is that mothers' stories are not always accepted by health professionals. For example, one of the midwives in my group had a difficult labour and a forceps birth. When she tried to talk to her obstetrician about her unhappiness with this experience, he was not interested in her feedback.

"The implications of my research for health professionals and parent educators are that we must listen to and pass on women's stories, and not expect women 'instinctively' to meet the complex demands of motherhood."