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Have you ever noticed that many couples speak to each other using baby talk? “Who wuvs you? You’re my widdle cutie pie!” Talking that way is acceptable with newborns, but it embarrasses teenagers when parents do it in public. “Ewww! Mom and dad, please!”
Researcher Ramesh Kaipa and his colleagues at Oklahoma State University studied baby talk between adults. They discovered that about two-thirds of couples do it, and it happens independent of language, race, country or religion. Spouses all over the world use baby talk with each other. The question is, why?
Parents’ speaking to infants with baby talk — exaggerated emotions and facial expressions, repeating silly or nonsensical words or phrases — has been well studied. Infants’ brains are still developing, and before they are capable of understanding grammar and rational communication, they can process emotions. Infants respond more readily when adults use baby talk: It triggers neurotransmitters in their brains and enhances mental development. Parents instinctively understand that baby talk helps babies mature.
So why do grown adult couples use it on each other?
Ramesh observed that in addition to helping infant brains develop, baby talk’s exaggerated emotional tones reinforce emotional bonds between parents and children. It not only helps children learn how to communicate; it builds love. And that’s probably why couples in love often speak baby talk to each other: through it they express love.
That’s not to say couples cannot be emotionally intimate without baby talk, nor that those who use baby talk will always be happily in love. But the data show that couples who use baby talk are more likely to report being happy in their relationships than those who do not.
That Mary and Joseph probably used baby talk with the infant Jesus seems likely. But I wonder: Did Joseph and Mary speak that way to each other?
The Church teaches that apart from never engaging in sexual relations, Mary and Joseph were otherwise every bit a married couple. True, Mary never sinned, and Joseph (as we learned in the Year of St. Joseph) may have been the most righteous person besides Mary to ever have lived, but they were just as human as our own parents, and they were certainly very much in love.
In “The World’s First Love,” Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote that Mary and Joseph brought to their marriage “two hearts with greater torrents of love than had ever before coursed through human breasts.” We may never know this side of heaven whether they spoke to each other in baby talk, but I have no doubt they regularly expressed their love openly in front of their holy Child.
In his public ministry, Jesus often spoke to his own adult disciples in affectionate terms: “My little children,” and “Little flock, your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.” Jesus had a fully developed emotional life. From whom did he learn this, if not from his own earthly parents?
In a 2009 address he gave in Cameroon, Pope Benedict XVI said, “Saint Joseph was the spouse of Mary. In the same way, each father sees himself entrusted with the mystery of womanhood through his own wife. Dear fathers, like Saint Joseph, respect and love your spouse; and by your love and your wise presence, lead your children to God.”
No matter how much teenagers may squirm, we all — infants, teens, adults — benefit from seeing couples truly in love. It shows us what God’s love looks like.
Father Margevicius is director of worship for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Sunday, Dec. 26
Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
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