No, reproduction is no longer a salient human instinct. Our species evolved to diminish the reproductive instinct and ultimately separate it into other instincts.
There are two favored instincts left that had to directly to do with reproduction, but have since become independent. They are 1) Sex and 2) Caring for cute things.
The cuteness instinct appears stronger in women. But combine these with bigger instincts, including but not limited to avoidance of loneliness, social approval, leading a "meaningful" life, etc., and then you have the cocktail for the "motherly instinct," in my humble opinion. It's not a unified instinct, not in humans at least. It's a complex aggregation of many. For example, it's connected to the desire to be with another human being and to be recognized by another human being - even if that human being ends up being a baby.
That line of reasoning means there is no longer an independent ingredient in that cocktail that can be called the "reproductive instinct." It's an aggregation of instincts that are not dependent on an individual's genetic reproduction.
"How can that be so?" you say, "All animals have a reproductive instinct." Well, humans are a special animal and we do not give them proper credit. They've used intellect to master the art of resource allocation, and of using cold abstract numbers to recognize the changing of the seasons and to analyze the availability of food, land, raw materials, and even labor. This has helped them tremendously in their ability to survive, and that ability has been an important one to pass on. Information distinguishes them and they've used it to dominate the planet.
But what has it done to reproduction? Having a baby means having another mouth to feed. A human's intellect knows this means more resource addition or diversion. Humans have evolved to learn that reproduction is useless unless the resources are there to secure the successful growth of that newborn.
This is especially true in hunter-gatherer societies, where it is not unheard of to kill a newborn if it would have slowed down their migration and resulted in an excess burden. For the survival of the group it is necessary to cut back on reproduction by whatever means.
Agricultural civilization significantly expanded our resources and our diminished reproductive instinct was allowed to flourish - but still under an intellectual constraint. Reproduction still meant problems for people who weren't wealthy. Religions cropped up all over the place to practice abstinence and sexual discipline. The Goddess of Fertility was the same goddess for both sexual fertility and agricultural fertility. They didn't just go together symbolically. They went together in practice.
I think this is also connected to why women were eventually treated as objects and why monogamy developed. The eventuality of numbers caught up to us and reproduction had to be regulated by all sorts of cold-blooded means. The apparent "carriers of reproduction" for the lack of a better description, women, had to be controlled.
I don't want to know where child sacrifices come in. I just don't want to know. What bizarre connection there could have been to killing entire groups of children at once, who were between 3 and 16 years, for the purposes of satisfying the gods. Just. No.
[Edit: I have very strong opinions about how human adults persistently appear to have a pathological view of human children. They simultaneously see them with almost divine potential and yet as weak and helpless. Yeah, babies aren't exactly self-sufficient, but "babying" goes much farther than it should. The Incas are just one extreme example. They saw their children as emissaries to the gods, but at the same time they thought they knew better - what purposes the children's lives served, when they should die, how they should die, how much rain they should ask the gods for, etc. Try to find an example in modern civilization, where an adult thinks the world of a child but simultaneously claims to know the world better, stealing control over that child's life and sending him or her into forced labor. Yeah. We call it "schooling." And sometimes it ends in death. Some kids just have to be sacrificed, I guess, in order to have a school system that works for the adult voting democratic majority and teacher's unions. And their false gods.]
In any case, the introduction of intellect functioned to gradually nullify reproduction as a salient instinct. Right now the people who reproduce the most are in the poorest conditions, correlated with their very low opportunity for intellectual development. The people and societies who have the most children, in other words, are not exceptionally sapient.
So I don't come off like a Nazi, let me say that that doesn't make them "bad people." I'm certain there are a billion poor mothers who are doing everything they can for their children. Just yesterday I saw a pod on CurrentTV (did I just say that? ) about Central American mothers and fathers hopping on the sides of trains to go through Mexico and steal their way into the United States - on top of walking in the desert for days on end and surviving other hardships - all for their kids back home. No, they're not bad people. They just weren't smart enough to know they wouldn't be able to raise their kids.
No, I don't think there's a motherly instinct specifically engendered to women, at least not the kind with the animist mystique and mythos that is often referred to. Because in that traditional sense, an old farmer man has a motherly instinct. Nor do I think there is a reproductive instinct. At least not anymore.
I think there is a caring instinct in all people, but the actual ability to do it is subject to intelligence and other mental factors. It's easy to forget that evolution is going on right now. It hasn't ended with whatever factors are currently present.
Finally, I recognize that I'm not a woman and could be entirely wrong. Feel to free to brush aside everything I've said for that point alone.
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