Language and Gender

This song adopts first person narration which speaks through a mother's personal viewpoint, using words like "I" and "me." It creates a more intimate perspective for the reader. Women are always the target subjects in gender studies.

Through different interpretation of “you”, this song could reveal maternal love or a love-hate relationship between a male and a female. The song lyrics delivered a message that women have an instinct to love while the music video is saying women have a maternal instinct to protect her children.

Maternal instinct refers to selfless love that mothers lavish on their children which has long been assumed to be an innate element of a woman's nature. In terms of family spoken interaction, mothers maintain connection manoeuvres. They value maintaining relationship more than problem solving. In the music video, the mother tried to reclaim her two sons from Children AID Social Services illegally by pretending to be somebody else. She did not solve the problem on thinking how to be granted custody of her children. Instead, she wanted to spend as much time as she could with her children even though they are on the run. She read books to the children in the car. She brought them to a restaurant for ice-cream. They hugged, kissed each other on face and laughed happily during the journey.

Love between a mother and her children could be so intense that she felt terrified every moment that somehow she would lose her children. The lyrics “And the thing that freaks me out is I’ll always be in doubt” reveals that the mother always felt worried and insecure about her children. In the middle part of the video, the mother looked at map but she constantly kept an eye on them to make sure her children are still around. It demonstrated a feminine character of a mother to emphasize intimacy rather than independence. Mothers need to be closely connected to her children.

“Animal instinct” in the music lyrics could be attributed to the emotions