Dougal Sutherland: The impact of parenting on your sense of disgust

Disgust is a basic human emotion, probably designed to keep us safe and well as it makes us avoid icky things.   Yet as a parent of a baby we are constantly exposed to disgusting things – known officially as “effluvia” (think anything that flows out of a baby). It would make sense that constant exposure to baby ones, twos, and vomit would have some impact on our sense of disgust, otherwise we probably wouldn’t ever get near them!   New research compared parents to non-parents and showed them images of disgusting images. It found that non-parents looked away from these much more quickly than parents. This suggests that parents get inoculated against disgust, as looking away quickly is a sign of being grossed out.   But the impact on parents only occurred after babies had started to wean. Also, parents who had older kids and who also had a newborn milk-fed only baby showed the same disgust response as non-parents.   So what might be going on?   It may be that parents’ sense of disgust is present with newborn babies in order to help keep them safe – newborns are obviously particularly sensitive to infection and so it makes sense that their parents might stay highly attuned to disgusting things that might harm their babies.   Then as babies grow into toddlers, their “outputs” change to being more adult-like (think of the difference between a milk-fed baby nappy and the nappy of a baby who has started solids) parents disgust gets blunted, probably through repeatedly being in contact with these outputs.   But, it seems that the inoculation against disgust is only a time limited thing as it re-emerges for parents as their kids grow up – this would make sense if we think of disgust as a core emotional response that is designed to keep us away from stuff that might make us sick.   I’m sure this reflects many parents’ experience of getting used to dirty nappies and cleaning up after a child’s been sick and maybe why it’s a bit more difficult to get back into it as a grandparent (speaking from experience).  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.