WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service - WINGS #37-24 Mothering as Gift
Genevieve Vaughan is a leading theorist in the Gift Economy movement. This is her presentation at the 2016 conference of the Mothering Institute for Research and Community Involvement in Toronto. Vaughan demonstrates that the act of mothering is unilateral gift-giving, and that an infant's experience of being mothered (whether by biological mother or other) builds both the physical brain and the template of what it is to be human. She further asserts that the entire exchange economy is parasitic on a more fundamental gift economy that continues unacknowledged in most societies today. The talk includes an excerpt from a video of Dr. Allan Schore, member clinical faculty, Dept. of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.