If you look around you as spring is in full swing, you will see plants that, in preparation for the warm season, first invest their energy in making flowers well before producing leaves. Thanks to this phenomenon, magnolias offer us the most spectacular flowering.
They are part of this group of plants called proteranthes. This term designates all species which, upon emerging from dormancy, primarily devote their energy to the production of potential offspring before developing foliage.
That said, far from wanting to dwell on this phenomenon, I simply mention it here to better talk about parental investment. I use it in this column to remind you that we benefit from celebrating mothers living up to the great parental investment that nature has imposed on them.
In question, among mammals that we are, sexual reproduction, an “unfair” partnership between males and females. In this energy-intensive enterprise which promotes the perpetuation of genes, it is the females who pay the heaviest price, they who ensure the gestation, childbirth and breastfeeding of the young.
They do all this work to ensure their offspring for the male partner who, in the vast majority of species, has left or disengaged from the project after the mating season. It’s as if, in a two-person entrepreneurial partnership, one person did all the work to only reap half of the profits. It is this apparent injustice that led evolutionary biologists to consider that females were naturally disadvantaged in this mode of reproduction.
Let us remember here that well before pregnancy, the mother produces a huge oocyte where the male brings a tiny sperm. This male contribution being microscopic in front of the oocyte, the meeting between the two is equivalent to that of a tadpole in love with an elephant.
And if the egg is so imposing, it is because it has stored the “meals” necessary for the first stages of development of the fertilized egg. This Big Mama keeps enough reserves in her womb so that the unborn fetus can begin its development, while it is connected to the circulatory system for the rest of its intrauterine history.
Parental investment is therefore all the care provided by parents to children to equip them in the race for life which perpetuates genes. A journey during which, without taking anything away from the dad, the loving mother plays the role of coach, psychologist, nutritionist and doctor to prepare and help her child have a good race.
In this racing image, I use the formula of Cyrille Barrette, whose spirit I particularly admire. This biologist and professor emeritus from Laval University is certainly the one who found the most edifying allegory to popularize this part of our genes in our perpetuation. In his wonderful book entitled The true nature of the human beasthe compares our existence to a relay race:
“In a relay race, the runners are like the individuals, the baton (the baton) that they pass to each other is similar to the genes. Each athlete is a temporary bearer of the stick that he received from the previous runner and which he will pass to the next one. Only the stick participates in the entire race and it is he who wins by crossing the finish line. However, he cannot run alone, without the runners he goes nowhere and if one of the participants escapes him, the race is over and lost, for the stick and for the runners. In life, it’s similar. Each individual is the temporary bearer of a sample received half from his father and half from his mother, and which he bequeaths to his children; if he has any. This continuity of the witness, that is to say of the genes which have always passed from one human to another, is the only way for a living being to aspire to immortality via that of its DNA. »
In Cyrille’s model, we can add that the runner who passes the baton to the next must accompany him during his first meters on the track before slowing down. This part of the journey, where the previous one encourages his torchbearer, symbolizes the parental investment which helps the children reach their cruising speed. Obviously, when the baton has passed and the receiver walks away, the parents slow down, jog to the side of the track and eventually stop and watch the child run. They know that the rest of their story is in good hands.
When their offspring passes the baton in turn, he applauds this third torchbearer at the same time as his parents who have become grandparents. The latter continue to encourage their grandchildren while calmly advancing towards the exit of the stadium.
It is the metaphor of the corn plant, whose ripening ear announces the beginning of yellowing and the death of its bearer. Compassionate, nature then devotes itself to reassuring the mother plant by explaining to it that there is a miniature version of it in each seed of this ear for which it gave its life. This is also why magnolias invest in their future before taking care of the present.
This body that we cherish so much is only the most elaborate packaging that nature has found to transport what is immortal in us: our genes. If Mother Nature placed this immortality in the meeting between a sperm and an egg, it is because she knew that investing in a new car from time to time was more intelligent and sustainable than retuning the same old engine for the first time. ‘eternity.
That said, it’s not just genes that leave traces of one’s being. In the cultural animals that we are, sex does not just have a reproductive function. It includes socio-affective dimensions that are as important and relevant as passing one’s DNA to the next generation.
If it is true, as the Malagasy say, that a human is only truly dead when the living have forgotten him, loving and being loved also leave traces of immortality. Adopting a child, raising them in love and sowing goodness are also beautiful ways to leave traces of life.
All this long text to simply say: “Happy birthday to all the mothers who carried their children in their womb, but also to those who carried them in their hearts before giving them roots and wings! »