If you’ve spent a fair bit of time around babies over the years, you may have noticed that you tend to carry them in the same way: on the left-hand side of your body.
Well, new research has just revealed that there’s a very important – and instinctive – reason why mothers tend to do this.
And it’s all to do with the bonding process.
After previous research revealed that up to 85% of women naturally cradle an infant on their left side, scientists at St Petersburg State University in Russia decided to explore whether this instinct is also seen in other mammals to determine if there could be a biological behaviour.
And, after studying species whose body structures differ from humans – flying foxes and walruses – the team found they were more than twice as likely to carry their offspring on the left, the Telegraph reports.
Strangely enough, the process seems to work both ways, as the team also found that animal offspring were more likely to position themselves to the left of their mothers’ visual field when separated from them.
The team, whose study was published in the Royal Society Journal of Biology Letters, now believe that there’s a biological reason for all this. They claim a mother may be better able to respond to her baby’s behaviour when carrying it on her left, as this position helps important cues pass straight to the right hemisphere of her brain, the part responsible for emotional processing.
Put simply, by placing your baby on the left, you’re able to respond more quickly to their needs.
‘Our results show that the left-sided positional bias in face to face mother-infant interactions is not a unique feature of primate evolution, and occurs in different groups of mammals,’ study leader Dr Andrey Giljov told the Telegraph.
‘This consistent pattern may have emerged owing to mutual perceptual benefits resulted from enhanced social processing by the right hemisphere.’
