‘Maternal Instinct’: A Shockingly Twisted Tale of Addiction to Validation

A car races through the rain before being pulled over by a state trooper in the opening moments of Jessica Dimmock’s Netflix sensation documentary, Maternal Instinct. The officer finds a distraught woman with a baby in her lap begging to be taken into hospital even though he insists that they have to wait for a proper ambulance. When they reach the hospital, the staff discusses how there is no way that this young woman, Taylor Parker, gave birth to the child that she was admitted with even though she insists that the baby is hers. “It’s mine!” she yells emphatically–something in her voice ringing through the room that what she is telling us is something that she believes. This all happens within the first six minutes of Dimmock’s film, and it refuses to let go.

When I told someone that I knew nothing of this case, they were shocked, because of what transpires over the 90-minute running time. If you are somehow new to this case, this story, or these people, do not go hunting for a plot or Google what Dimmock’s film entails. I don’t remember the last time my jaw was on the floor like this.

“Taylor is hard to describe,” someone says early on in Dimmock’s film, and they also mention that she was always the type of girl who wanted to get the guy. Parker does land a beau in Wade Griffin, a kind-hearted Texas rancher who looks forward to a burgeoning relationship as much as Parker, even if his mother has trouble hiding her distaste for his new lady. Parker tells Griffin, his family, and really anyone who will listen about her combative relationship with her mother and everyone seems to know that Parker comes from money. She plays the part well, too, according to almost everyone that she comes in contact with.

Dimmock keeps showing us Parker’s picture over and over again, and she did snap a lot of selfies of herself. Maybe she uses a cute filter here and there, but everyone has nice things to say about her, as if we can almost can hear people saying they will get in the picture with her. Only after a few months of dating, she announces to Wade that she’s pregnant, but things begin to not add up. Friends of the couple even express concern that Parker was more excited to share that she was pregnant–kind of like that friend who feeds off attention. The smiles all seem performative and the status updates don’t stop.

When we meet former friends of Parker–Kenzie and Abby–we begin to understand what Dimmock is doing in terms of painting the portrait of a pathological liar. When one of Parker’s former physician’s is interviewed, Maternal Instinct begins a path that will lead you down a road that you did not expect. And you cannot look away.

There is the clear true crime element that makes this so addictive, but Dimmock is proposing something almost wholly new in the last 20 years. What do we do when we become addicted to that kind of serotonin boost from sharing our lives? That might be putting it mildly in the gran scheme of things going on in this doc, but there is a growing concern with how people’s gnarled sense of selves can be shaped and molded by our presence online. This isn’t new for Parker, either. Kenzie and Abby openly refer to how Parker would grow more obsessed with one friend’s pregnancy.

Do not look up more about the Taylor Parker case. Maternal Instinct will sicken you, shock you, and frighten you.

Maternal Instinct is streaming now on Netflix.