Babies Flirt

There are other reasons to think that even very young babies are especially tuned to people. Babies flirt. One of the great pleasures in life is to hold a three-month-old in your arms and talk absolute nonsense. "My, my, my," you hear your usually sane, responsible, professional voice saying, "you are a pretty bunny, aren't you, aren't you, aren't you, sweetums, aren't you a pretty bunny?" You raise your eyebrows and purse your mouth and make ridiculous faces. But the even more striking thing is that that tiny baby responds to your absurdities. He coos in response to your coo, he answers your smile with a smile of his own, he gestures in rhythm with the intonation of your voice. It's as if the two of you are engaged in an intricate dance, a kind of wordless conversation, a silly love song, pillow talk. It's sheer heaven.

But aside from being sheer heaven, it's also more evidence that babies spontaneously coordinate their own expressions, gestures, and voices with the expressions, gestures, and voices of other people. Flirting is largely a matter of timing. If you look around at a party, you can tell who's flirting just by looking at them, without even hearing a word. What you see is the way two people time their gestures so they're in sync with each other and with nobody else in the crowded room. She brushes her hair off her face, and he puts his hand in his pocket; she leans forward eagerly and talks, and he leans back sympathetically and listens. It's the same way with babies. When you talk. the baby is still; when you pause, the baby takes her turn and there's a burst of coos and waving fists and kicking legs. Like imitation, baby flirtation suggests that babies not only know people when they see them but also that they are connected to people in a special way. Like grown-up flirtation, baby flirtation bypasses language and establishes a more direct link between people.

The back and forth of goo-goo eyes and cooing between mothers and their babies is a flirtatious bonding.