Latest news with #MotherAnimal
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mom sheds light on disturbing new health risk facing expectant mothers and their children: 'It is inescapable'
Helen Jukes wrote a book about how "forever chemicals" affected her pregnancy and baby. She told The Guardian it's a crucial issue for maternal and fetal health that isn't talked about enough among expectant mothers. As The Guardian reported, Jukes published a book titled "Mother Animal" that details how contaminated she and her baby became due to forever chemicals. It wasn't until after her daughter's birth that she learned about how exposure to forever chemicals, also known as PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), could cause breastfeeding issues. She also didn't realize how prevalent they were during pregnancy and in household and beauty products. She consulted toxicologists, epidemiologists, and other experts to understand the connection between motherhood and pollution to write her book. Researchers have found forever chemicals in everything from breast milk to amniotic fluid and lung tissues. As The Guardian put it, "It is inescapable." Forever chemicals are a dangerous public health threat, putting vulnerable populations at high risk of disease. Jukes' book highlights an important issue that many pregnant women aren't aware of. Through it, she is raising public awareness about how pollution and forever chemicals impact people's lives before they're even born. But instead of invoking a sense of doom and gloom in her writing, she suggests that families can draw inspiration from wild animals that raise their young communally and collectively. She also inspires hope that we use this knowledge to create positive change. Publications like Jukes' new book are helping people understand the tremendous scope of forever chemicals and their impacts on our lives. Do you worry about having toxic forever chemicals in your home? Majorly Sometimes Not really I don't know enough about them Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Meanwhile, researchers are working toward solutions to address PFAS pollution, such as UV light filters that capture and destroy dangerous chemicals. Lawmakers are also banning PFAS in their states to reduce their spread in our environment and the negative impact on people's health. As an individual, whether you're an expectant mother or not, you can limit your exposure to forever chemicals by avoiding single-use plastic products. Preventing PFAS exposure can also involve choosing clean cosmetics, buying reusable health and beauty products, and bringing your own to-go containers to restaurants. Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more and waste less, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘I was causing harm': author Helen Jukes on motherhood and our polluted bodies
When Helen Jukes told her friends she was writing about motherhood and pollution, they advised her against it and warned she might make pregnant people more anxious than they already were. But she disagreed. Mother Animal, a personal account of Jukes' pregnancy and early years of motherhood, details her growing realisation of how contaminated her body, and her baby, have become. And it's something she thinks all would-be parents should be more aware of. There are chemicals from human industry in breast milk, amniotic fluid and bones, she writes. Toxicologists have found 'forever chemicals' in embryos and foetuses at 'every stage of pregnancy … in lung tissues, in livers'. It is inescapable. Yet it is spoken about far too little. 'I find it quite disrespectful to think that mothers wouldn't be capable of handling [this] information,' she says when we meet at her home on the edge of the Peak District. Around the time she got pregnant, Jukes actively wanted to know what kind of world she was bringing her child into, reading, for example, David Wallace-Wells' The Uninhabitable Earth, about the scale of the climate crisis and how devastating its effects are and will become. But it wasn't until she had her daughter that she realised how much she had missed; how much pregnancy and breastfeeding manuals had left out. 'I did not learn about the human studies that found that high exposure to forever chemicals was significantly related to early undesired weaning, or not initiating breastfeeding at all – or that they might be present in the makeup I applied to my skin, and the waterproof coating on my raincoat and the stain resistant fabric on my sofa,' she explains in the book. It's the disbelief at all she didn't hear about that seems to drive forward her research and writing, which moves between a wild, controlled anger that is so intimately conveyed you feel you're in it with her and an unceasing determination to understand the state of play. Jukes says she took inspiration from Sandra Steingraber's, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, which looks at the environmental hazards in pregnancy, and Lucy Cooke's Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, which paints a picture of different animals' sexual identities and sexualities to challenge gender stereotypes. She also spoke to a lot of different experts, including a toxicologist who just so happens to be trying to have a baby. She asks the toxicologist an inevitable question: how does she hold motherhood and pollution in her mind at the same time? Her immediate answer is that she can't; they have to remain separate. 'In asking the question, I realised that I had been looking for reassurance: it's not as bad as you think. But it is that bad,' Jukes writes. If you look at her setup, Jukes' life might seem miles away from all of this. She picks me up from a small train station not far from her house. It feels remote in comparison to London, where I've come from. The train station is deserted, it looks as if it has not long ago rained, the air feels fresh and you can see lush greenery all around. I imagine the peace you might find living nestled among the trees. I wonder if she feels this, having moved here from Oxford and before that London (there was also a brief stint in Italy and the Welsh borders). Leaving behind her job in the third sector, now she works amid this rolling countryside as a writer and a teacher of writing. But I'm reminded when we speak not to romanticise the natural world as a place of purity. Part of the book is about showing this view of nature as a con, she says, an image that's created by culture. Jukes is softly spoken and carefully weighs up her answers to my questions. But her frustration is still palpable, sitting in the living room of the former worker's cottage she lives in with her daughter. What bothers her are the misconceptions around naturalness and motherhood. 'I don't think that had really landed for me before I became pregnant and suddenly I began to find some of the images and advertisements and the discourse [around pregnancy and breastfeeding] really horrifying,' she says. If the connection between mother, baby and contamination is mentioned at all, it's chalked up to personal responsibility: avoid cigarette smoke, eat less seafood. Mother Animal could have easily turned into a how-to book, and it isn't difficult to imagine how popular a guide to parenting amid the pollution might be. But Jukes knows individualism is not the answer; making the right choice, even if it were possible, she says, assumes a level of information and financial capability not available to everyone. Being a mother is not about creating a small environment where everything is safe, calm and pure, she explains. This doesn't exist. Take feeding your baby. There is not comprehensive global data on the likely level of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas, also referred to as forever chemicals) in different peoples' breast milk, with studies suggesting it varies internationally and domestically. If you are in an area of high exposure, for example through contaminated drinking water, some peoples' breastmilk can have a huge amount of toxins in it. Another recent study of Dutch infants, found a higher level of daily intake of Pfas were influenced by, among other things, exclusively breastfed babies, maternal age and if it was the mother's first-time breastfeeding. The other feeding option, formula, has problems too. One investigation found 85 chemical compounds defined as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which are chemicals that interfere with how hormones work, or suspected EDCs in different formula milks and containers, meaning individual low exposure to each substance. At the same time, polypropylene infant feeding bottles release high levels of microplastics, and it seems this increases when they're exposed to sterilisation and high-water temperatures. Owning up to her culpability was important for Jukes. 'Yes, on the one hand I was feeling achingly kind of full of care,' she explains, 'and on the other hand … I was causing harm.' She isn't only referring to the chemical burden she was passing on to her child; she was bringing stuff into their home, throwing it in the bin and from there it was going to affect other creatures and other parts of the world too. Nature, humans, other animals, she believes, are all intertwined. Jukes recounts taking some comfort in learning about the way other animals parent, detailing the wild complexity in how they care for their young in the book. She tells me about the caddis flies, whose larvae don't have any parental care; they create cases for themselves out of flotsam they find in their environment. Or the Australian three-toed skink, which can have eggs and live young in the same litter. These accounts make moments of this urgent book joyful and expansive. 'Who am I to say these simple creatures are not complex? The world is diverse and dynamic,' she says. 'These creatures are amazing'. But they are vulnerable too. There are pesticides in seabirds, flame retardants in humpback whales and industrial solvents in penguin eggs. Just like the pregnancy books, the research that she read about other animals parenting techniques often didn't cover this part. 'Mothering creatures evolve to fit the needs of their niche, but those niches are changing, and the extent to which the mothering creatures are able to adapt (rather than remain steady and unchanging) will be a key factor in determining which species survive into the future', she writes. With all that she knows, I wonder, how does she cope? How do you raise your child amid the toxicity, especially if you know you can't control it all? She says we have to channel our energies into collective change. 'We need to be writing to MPs,' she says. 'We need to be making the case that these chemicals should not be circulated at all.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion By the time I get to the end of the book, it seems Jukes is not only railing against all the pollution we've created, she is also imagining how else we might have and raise children in this world. In her first book A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings, a meditative, personal reflection on beekeeping, we leave Jukes as she's falling in love. In Mother Animal, we rejoin her when she's embarking on motherhood, we assume with the same person. But over the course of the book, she subtly indicates that their relationship has broken down. It feels like she's searching for a light in a storm; one of which might be all the animals who show mothering can be much more flexible than we realise. Rare though it might be in the animal world, she writes about mother lions branching off from their prides to raise offspring together and emperor penguins putting their young together in a 'communal creche' when they're out hunting. Maybe we take this variety seriously. Maybe all the responsibility need not fall on the mother. Maybe we think of raising children collectively. Despite this tentative hope, there is one part of Mother Animal I can't stop thinking about. Jukes speaks to a veterinary epidemiologist in Edinburgh who led a necropsy on an orca, Lulu, who came from a population where there hadn't been any offspring in 25 years. They found that Lulu had scar-like ovaries, which prevented her from having calves, and she had a level of polychlorinated biphenyls – a group of toxic chemicals used in paints, glue and other industrial products – in her body a hundred times over what is considered safe. These orcas may go extinct within our lifetime. In a world of such toxicity, a world where the climate and our natural world is in crisis, the epidemiologist admitted to Jukes that he'd chosen not to have children. I ask her about this; how did she feel when he said this? She explains that she respects this decision, and understands why people make it. But for her, despite all she knows, all she has learned and all she has written, she maintains that we cannot just stop. 'If we do', she says, 'they're winning'. Mother Animal by Helen Jukes is published on 27 February by Elliott & Thompson.
The Independent
27-02-2025
- Science
- The Independent
The animal kingdom's best parents – and what they can teach us
Instinct plays a huge role in parenting, and humans can learn a lot from the animal kingdom. Helen Jukes, author of Mother Animal, which explores parenting in the natural world, says that there's an "extraordinary diversity" when it comes to raising offspring. 'There are single mums and single dads, parenting couples and communal breeders, as well as offspring capable of fending for themselves from birth,' she says. Animals find a style of parenting that meets the needs of their niche, she says. Motherhood is a "live balancing act between parent, infant and the wider world'. Here are some of the best animal parents that Ms Jukes has identified: 1. Polar bears Polar bear mothers are known for their dedication, but they also exhibit a unique form of control over their reproductive process. Ms Jukes says polar bears mate in late spring as Arctic temperatures begin to rise. However, the females have the ability to suspend their pregnancy until autumn. During this period, the embryonic development will either continue or be terminated, depending on whether the mother has built up enough fat reserves throughout the summer months. This remarkable adaptation allows polar bear mothers to ensure they have sufficient resources to support their offspring in the harsh Arctic environment. 'If all goes well, the pregnant mother will build herself a snow cave and crawl inside it to give birth in winter – she won't leave the cave, or eat or drink, until the following spring,' says Ms Jukes. 'Her cubs will continue nursing until they're at least 20 months old, and will stay with her for almost three years.' 2. Orangutans 'Orangutan mothers are nothing if not devoted,' says Ms Jukes. 'A female will provide the entirety of her infant's food and transport for the first years of his life – she might continue nursing until they're six or seven.' Raising babies takes so much out of the orangutan mother that she leaves eight to 10 years between successive births, and only has three or four babies during her lifetime. But she's 'highly attuned' to what those infants need, says Ms Jukes – for example, once they start weaning, she'll initially prepare food by grinding it up with her teeth, then passing it to them to chew. As they mature, she adapts this technique and they learn to eat whole foods. 'Such an intensive form of parenting might seem like a burden, but it also grants her considerable influence,' Ms Jukes explains. 'She defines many of the experiences of the next generation – she shapes their skills and habits. In this way, contrary to the stereotype of the mute and passive mother, she possesses important evolutionary significance.' 3. Malleefowl As parenting goes, malleefowl (stocky ground-nesting birds with flecked, dust-coloured wings) are at the other extreme, and Jukes explains: 'Unlike orangutans, they provide almost nothing in the way of parental care.' The malleefowl nest is mostly built by the father, who scrapes dead leaves and sand into a large mound that may extend to over four metres in diameter and a metre in height, explains Ms Jukes. 'Neither parent sits on the eggs; they're incubated through the heat generated by the process of decomposition,' she says. And, in one of the animal kingdom's most extreme examples of infant independence, she says: 'Once hatched, the chicks will dig themselves out and make a dash for nearby undergrowth without ever seeing their parents.' 4. Smooth guardian frogs Raising offspring isn't all down to mother animals, and there are single dads in the animal kingdom, too. Ms Jukes explains that after a female smooth guardian frog has laid her eggs, the male will guard the clutch for about 10 days, when he shows little interest in mating, eating or even moving. Once hatched, the tadpoles will climb onto his back to be carried to a nearby pool where they'll complete their process of maturation to become adult frogs. 'The male smooth guardian frog is one of nature's single dads, and a remarkably devoted one too,' Jukes observes. 5. Flamingos Ms Jukes says around 90 per cent of birds parent in couples, and some share tasks with a striking level of flexibility. 'Captive flamingos have been observed forming same-sex pairs, and in such cases they appear to split the tasks as an opposite sex couple would – one spends more time away from the nest, while the other primarily looks after the eggs,' she says. Flamingo parenting is fundamentally a shared task, and in opposite sex couples, both males and females produce a bright 'crop milk' from a sac in their throat, which they feed to newborn chicks. Ms Jukes says: 'This 'milk' is bright red in colour – both parents turn visibly paler through the course of feeding, as their white chicks turn pink.' 6. Giraffes Parenting is a group effort for giraffes, who form communal creches for raising offspring and frequently feed each other's calves, explains Ms Jukes. She says: 'We've all heard the expression 'it takes a village to raise a child', and this is certainly true when it comes to giraffes'. She points out that in one study, 86 per cent of giraffe calves in a group were seen suckling non-biological mothers. 'Adult females have even been known to send out distress signals following the death of another's calf,' she says, 'suggesting they're capable of forming strong bonds with infants even in the absence of biological ties.' 7. Bats Bats don't do solitary parenting either – Ms Jukes says most bat species are highly social, and their offspring are raised in all-female roosts. And as with giraffes, mothers frequently feed each other's pups. 'Communal creches allow mothers to leave their young in safety while they go out hunting,' says Ms Jukes. 'Should a pup fall to the ground during this time, he'll emit a loud isolation call, and once a caregiver has found him she'll stay with him for up to half an hour until his own mother arrives and transports him back to the roost. 'How's that for good babysitting?' She adds: 'Primed as we are to draw comparisons between ourselves and other species, developing research challenges us to think again about mothering, and about other animals – not just what separates us, but how we're joined.'
The Independent
26-02-2025
- General
- The Independent
7 extraordinary parents from the animal kingdom – and what we can learn from them
A lot of parenting stems from instinct – and that's exactly how animals raise their young. And while human parents like to think they look after their children better than any far-less intelligent animals could, there's no doubt that there are lessons to be learned from parenting in the animal kingdom. Helen Jukes, author of the new book Mother Animal, which tells stories of parenting, nesting and birthing from the natural world, says: 'We tend to carry a particular image of what's natural when it comes to parenting, but venture a little way into the animal world and an extraordinary diversity emerges when it comes to raising offspring. 'There are single mums and single dads, parenting couples and communal breeders, as well as offspring capable of fending for themselves from birth. For animals, motherhood isn't about conforming to a particular type so much as finding a form and style of parenting that meets the needs of their niche – a live balancing act between parent, infant and the wider world.' Here's a few prime examples Jukes has selected from the wonderful world of animal parenting… 1. Polar bears Polar bears are devoted mothers – but with a certain element of control. Jukes explains the bears mate in late spring as Arctic temperatures begin to rise, and females will suspend the pregnancy until autumn, when embryonic development will either continue or be terminated, depending on whether the mother's built up enough fat reserves through the summer months. 'If all goes well, the pregnant mother will build herself a snow cave and crawl inside it to give birth in winter – she won't leave the cave, or eat or drink, until the following spring,' says Jukes. 'Her cubs will continue nursing until they're at least 20 months old, and will stay with her for almost three years.' 2. Orangutans 'Orangutan mothers are nothing if not devoted,' says Jukes. 'A female will provide the entirety of her infant's food and transport for the first years of his life – she might continue nursing until they're six or seven.' Raising babies takes so much out of the orangutan mother that she leaves eight to 10 years between successive births, and only has three or four babies during her lifetime. But she's 'highly attuned' to what those infants need, says Jukes – for example, once they start weaning, she'll initially prepare food by grinding it up with her teeth, then passing it to them to chew. As they mature, she adapts this technique and they learn to eat whole foods. 'Such an intensive form of parenting might seem like a burden, but it also grants her considerable influence,' Jukes explains. 'She defines many of the experiences of the next generation – she shapes their skills and habits. In this way, contrary to the stereotype of the mute and passive mother, she possesses important evolutionary significance.' 3. Malleefowl As parenting goes, malleefowl (stocky ground-nesting birds with flecked, dust-coloured wings) are at the other extreme, and Jukes explains: 'Unlike orangutans, they provide almost nothing in the way of parental care.' The malleefowl nest is mostly built by the father, who scrapes dead leaves and sand into a large mound that may extend to over four metres in diameter and a metre in height, explains Jukes. 'Neither parent sits on the eggs; they're incubated through the heat generated by the process of decomposition,' she says. And, in one of the animal kingdom's most extreme examples of infant independence, she says: 'Once hatched, the chicks will dig themselves out and make a dash for nearby undergrowth without ever seeing their parents.' 4. Smooth guardian frogs Raising offspring isn't all down to mother animals, and there are single dads in the animal kingdom, too. Jukes explains that after a female smooth guardian frog has laid her eggs, the male will guard the clutch for about 10 days, when he shows little interest in mating, eating or even moving. Once hatched, the tadpoles will climb onto his back to be carried to a nearby pool where they'll complete their process of maturation to become adult frogs. 'The male smooth guardian frog is one of nature's single dads, and a remarkably devoted one too,' Jukes observes. 5. Flamingos Jukes says around 90% of birds parent in couples, and some share tasks with a striking level of flexibility. 'Captive flamingos have been observed forming same-sex pairs, and in such cases they appear to split the tasks as an opposite sex couple would – one spends more time away from the nest, while the other primarily looks after the eggs,' she says. Flamingo parenting is fundamentally a shared task, and in opposite sex couples, both males and females produce a bright 'crop milk' from a sac in their throat, which they feed to newborn chicks. Jukes says: 'This 'milk' is bright red in colour – both parents turn visibly paler through the course of feeding, as their white chicks turn pink.' 6. Giraffes Parenting is a group effort for giraffes, who form communal creches for raising offspring and frequently feed each other's calves, explains Jukes. She says: 'We've all heard the expression 'it takes a village to raise a child', and this is certainly true when it comes to giraffes'. She points out that in one study, 86% of giraffe calves in a group were seen suckling non-biological mothers. 'Adult females have even been known to send out distress signals following the death of another's calf,' she says, 'suggesting they're capable of forming strong bonds with infants even in the absence of biological ties.' 7. Bats Bats don't do solitary parenting either – Jukes says most bat species are highly social, and their offspring are raised in all-female roosts. And as with giraffes, mothers frequently feed each other's pups. 'Communal creches allow mothers to leave their young in safety while they go out hunting,' says Jukes. 'Should a pup fall to the ground during this time, he'll emit a loud isolation call, and once a caregiver has found him she'll stay with him for up to half an hour until his own mother arrives and transports him back to the roost. 'How's that for good babysitting?' She adds: 'Primed as we are to draw comparisons between ourselves and other species, developing research challenges us to think again about mothering, and about other animals – not just what separates us, but how we're joined.'
