Babies intuition towards women
Our baby is adopted since birth, and is currently 5 months old. Baby was never breastfed, so there was never that connection to mom. Both parents are equal partners, 50-50 responsibility with child (feeding, changing diapers, entertaining, etc).
I’m the mom. I’ve noticed our baby doesn’t show any preference towards either parent if she’s happy or just needing regular feeding/ entertaining. But if she’s upset, for whatever reasons (skipping her nap, hungry, itchy teething), I’m the only one that can easily sooth her. Dad tries rocking, feeding, etc but baby keeps crying. But when I take over and do the same things, she calms down almost immediately.
She’s usually a very calm baby, and we don’t need to “fix” anything. I’m just curious to know if there’s any science based research that shows some sort of instinct where babies feel safer with women. I understand it when a mom is the main caregiver, but why is this the case even when parenting is 50-50.
I should also mention that baby does have a nanny during the day, and is a woman. Also, grandma comes over to visit and care for her from time to time, and there is no grandpa in the picture. Could it be that at an earlier age they just notice women as usual main caregivers?