The Wonder Weeks
on June 9, 2023, 3:00 AM -04
Synopsis
The comedy The Wonder Weeks follows three couples. Successful Anne (Sallie Harmsen) is all about work. But when she returns from maternity leave, she realizes that life changes completely when you have a baby, which ends up damaging her relationship with her husband, Barry (Soy Kroon). Therefore, she decides to join the club for mothers founded by Kim (Katja Schuurman), who is married to Roos (Sarah Chronis). Together, they raise two children that they had with the help of their friend, Kaj (Louis Talpe). But not everything is rosy for the three of them.
Ethologists have documented predictable 'regression periods' in the interactions of mothers and infants in many species, suggesting an early origin in evolution. In the course of a 1971-1973 longitudinal ethological study of chimpanzees in the wild, working with Jane Goodall, van de Rijt and Plooij published additional data demonstrating predictable regression periods in Chimpanzee mother-infant dyads, the correlation of illnesses with these, and the importance of the mother's interactions for the baby's growing independence and learning. They hypothesized a new type of learning important in the evolution of human parenting, with reference to an explanation in control theory. To test this hypothesis, they applied the observational methodology of ethology to human mothers and infants. Their first human study, involving Dutch mothers and their infants, with extrinsic sources of stress carefully controlled, was published in the Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology in 1992.
Research into development of the central nervous system has identified periods of rapid change (PRC) which coincide with the observed regression periods, and known stages of neurological development of the brain have been correlated with the behavioural observations. Consistent with the hypothesis of increased stress, a correlation between regression periods and upticks of illness has been reported, and a correlation with SIDS. One peer-reviewed study included verification of parents' reports that babies master a cluster of new skills after each regression period. Independent replication studies were carried out at universities in four countries, Groningen in the Netherlands, Oxford in England, Girona in Spain, and Gothenburg in Sweden. The failure of the first replication study was a subject of controversy.
