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1.5.4Mother and Baby Communication: We're All Preemies At Birth
Selective pressure for group living favoured a large brain size (encephalization) and also two-legged walking and running (bipedalism). In hominid females, bipedalism narrowed the birth canal substantially. This placed an upper limit on the size of a newborn’s head that could squeeze through the birth canal.
It also place an upper limit on gestation length. In the human species, babies are actually born significantly prematurely. We’re all “preemies.” As a result, at birth, human babies are completely helpless, and remain so for a significant length of time.
Meanwhile, if a pre-lingual human infant has any hope of surviving, it needs some way to continually communicate its many and constant needs with its mother. And the mother needs a way of knowing for certain that she is meeting those needs successfully. Since newborns do not have language, meaningful mother-infant communication must take other forms.