Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

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 i