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saskiasauce's review against another edition
5.0
Blaffer Hrdy develops a good argument for the fundamental differences between the way human primates and other primates have developed their empathic and social abilities. In passing this also makes clear why we should expect young mothers to struggle, when they are trying to raise their children alone. We have been rearing children in groups since we became hunter-gatherers. A mother staying home to raise her children on her own is really strange, viewed in this way.
jeo224's review against another edition
4.0
Hrdy, an anthropologist, makes an arumt for the importance of cooperative parenting for humans and how we eveolved. Very good, interesting arguments.
kalhansolo45's review
2.0
Read for a class. Evolutionary anthropology isn't really my thing, so this was a tough read for me.
archytas's review against another edition
4.0
Hrdy is a significant voice of sanity in the anthropological/primatological end of the "what is it to be human" science world. Blaffer's books tend to get less attention than Nicholas Wade's (or even Franz de Waal's and Jared Diamond's*) despite her well-supported focus (or perhaps because of) - cooperation as a distinguisher of humanity. Popular science books mostly tell us that human development was driven by competition by aggressive individuals over a scarce landscape. Hrdy's work, which emphasises the bleeding obvious: that humans succeed best at, and in fact can't survive without, highly complex forms of cooperation, perhaps plays less well to a world riven by tensions, in which the relatively powerful need reason and after reason to argue for the need to maintain that privilege, even at the great human cost to the rest.
*Calm down, de Waal and Diamond fans (I'm def a de Waal fan, and might be a Diamond fan if his fans weren't generally so bloody likely never to have read anything by anyone else). I'm not arguing either of these two promote stupidity, just that their word tends to get much more attention, and yet don't really tackle the questions they are quoted as being authorities on.
In Mothers and Others, Hrdy elaborates a tightly defended theory: that cooperative parenting developed in humans before our weirdly large brains, and created a precondition for the development of humanity. Along the way, she argues that the intensity of our social skills has an evolutionary driver of babies needing to attract parental and alloparental care; that our extended post-menapausal lifespans developed to facilitate alloparental care by grandmothers; that the reasonably late development of puberty is also to facilitate both extra care of infants from older children, and also a period of training in motherhood which improves survival chances of future offspring; that there are strong biological reward mechanisms for parenting in our brains, and that these vary based on sex (being stronger in women*). The journey to explore this jumps from primate studies to the anthropology of modern hunter-gatherer groups, and even the occasional reference to industrialized societies.
*Sex tends to be described as a binary in well, almost everything produced before about five years ago, but it can just as easily be viewed as a distributed variation, with clusters and correlations around clusters.
Hrdy largely succeeded with me in defending her central hypothesis, perhaps less so with some of the subsidiary hypotheses - and I'm not sure how significant the question of collaborative parenting is to the development of the social human brain, I guess. She convinced me it is at least one lever, but I remain skeptical of overemphasising any one lever. The book is a gem because it is posited so clearly in the world of what so clearly drove our evolution distinct from other primate species, the elaborate social connection and construction of our identity. Hrdy references everything, provides great summaries of current scientific trends and clearly distinguishes between the accepted and the speculative.
Her primatology seemed significantly stronger to me than the anthropology. In general, Hrdy had a disconcerting tendency to jump from evolutionary history of more than 6 million years ago (the point when we diverged from the tree that produced benobos and chimps) to that of a few thousand years ago. She starts by pointing out why this is not useful (and makes the valid point that we lack evidence of pre-neolithic conflicts in the way we have of neolithic conflict, for example) but then just does it anyway.
As an Australian, living on land that humans have been part of for at least 60,000 years, I get particularly narky at science which ignores my continent's significance. Hrdy consistently references human development as if post-Africa history is the neolithic in evolutionary terms. She also tends to describe Aboriginal people as a single group e.g. "the Mbuti of Central Africa, Nayaka foragers of South India, the Batek of Malaysia, Australian Aborigines, and the North American Cree". I can't really expect a book published nearly a decade ago to take account of recent acknowledgement of farming and land cultivation among some Aboriginal communities, but lumping hundreds of different communities into one generalisation is a bit much. That reference indicated one of the other weaknesses, a tendency to romanticised views of belief and social systems in indigenous communities (as opposed to systems of production, where Hrdy is sharply analytical). Hrdy argues that all the groups listed above "share a view of their physical environment as a “giving” place occupied by others who are also liable to be well-disposed and generous". In another point, she uses as an example of cooperative instincts the Hawaiian peoples' gifts to Captain Cook on arrival. Hawaiian gift-giving was part of an intricate patronage-based power system, where accepting gifts involved accepting authority as well; and far from assuming others are likely to be nice, Aboriginal societies such as the Eora peoples in NSW function through an intricate system of responsibilities/rights to country, violation of which once incurred punishments that could result in death. A sense that country is maintained, not changed, by humanity seems likely to come from long experience of survival and balance.
Hrdy's forays into modern society were just as stretched. This mainly involved discussing the role of fathers in parenting over time. This is hard stuff, as it intersects so clearly with debates about sex roles in modern society. Hrdy is trying to balance some of her most heartfelt views here: that we have evolved biological mechanisms to ensure high-quality child care, with an acknowledgement that much of modern sex roles are socially constructed. Part of this is looking at whether the involvement of fathers is essential to human survival. I wasn't convinced by her use of modern abandonment rates, and even less so by her suggestion that the fact that the rates of false parentage are much higher in the DNA tests requested by suspicious men than those done randomly means men have some kind of natural mechanism to identify infidelity (especially since the former is around 30%: 70% of men who suspect they are not the father - or are trying to avoid child support payments - actually are.). She is on much stronger ground with studies that show differential oxytocin responses between men and women, and explores the variety of human construction of families, which always involves mothers and sometimes involves intense father care. This points to what anthropology would say: we have the potential for strong male bonding to children, in fact, we have the potential to construct the societies we want to live in.
So now, as is my cranky wont, much of this review is discussing the weak spots. But none of this material is central to Hrdy's thesis, nor does it undermine her broad conclusions. The primate studies are wonderful, well-detailed and pointing to uncomfortable truths for the "aggressive men make us who we are" mob. I'll rea
*Calm down, de Waal and Diamond fans (I'm def a de Waal fan, and might be a Diamond fan if his fans weren't generally so bloody likely never to have read anything by anyone else). I'm not arguing either of these two promote stupidity, just that their word tends to get much more attention, and yet don't really tackle the questions they are quoted as being authorities on.
In Mothers and Others, Hrdy elaborates a tightly defended theory: that cooperative parenting developed in humans before our weirdly large brains, and created a precondition for the development of humanity. Along the way, she argues that the intensity of our social skills has an evolutionary driver of babies needing to attract parental and alloparental care; that our extended post-menapausal lifespans developed to facilitate alloparental care by grandmothers; that the reasonably late development of puberty is also to facilitate both extra care of infants from older children, and also a period of training in motherhood which improves survival chances of future offspring; that there are strong biological reward mechanisms for parenting in our brains, and that these vary based on sex (being stronger in women*). The journey to explore this jumps from primate studies to the anthropology of modern hunter-gatherer groups, and even the occasional reference to industrialized societies.
*Sex tends to be described as a binary in well, almost everything produced before about five years ago, but it can just as easily be viewed as a distributed variation, with clusters and correlations around clusters.
Hrdy largely succeeded with me in defending her central hypothesis, perhaps less so with some of the subsidiary hypotheses - and I'm not sure how significant the question of collaborative parenting is to the development of the social human brain, I guess. She convinced me it is at least one lever, but I remain skeptical of overemphasising any one lever. The book is a gem because it is posited so clearly in the world of what so clearly drove our evolution distinct from other primate species, the elaborate social connection and construction of our identity. Hrdy references everything, provides great summaries of current scientific trends and clearly distinguishes between the accepted and the speculative.
Her primatology seemed significantly stronger to me than the anthropology. In general, Hrdy had a disconcerting tendency to jump from evolutionary history of more than 6 million years ago (the point when we diverged from the tree that produced benobos and chimps) to that of a few thousand years ago. She starts by pointing out why this is not useful (and makes the valid point that we lack evidence of pre-neolithic conflicts in the way we have of neolithic conflict, for example) but then just does it anyway.
As an Australian, living on land that humans have been part of for at least 60,000 years, I get particularly narky at science which ignores my continent's significance. Hrdy consistently references human development as if post-Africa history is the neolithic in evolutionary terms. She also tends to describe Aboriginal people as a single group e.g. "the Mbuti of Central Africa, Nayaka foragers of South India, the Batek of Malaysia, Australian Aborigines, and the North American Cree". I can't really expect a book published nearly a decade ago to take account of recent acknowledgement of farming and land cultivation among some Aboriginal communities, but lumping hundreds of different communities into one generalisation is a bit much. That reference indicated one of the other weaknesses, a tendency to romanticised views of belief and social systems in indigenous communities (as opposed to systems of production, where Hrdy is sharply analytical). Hrdy argues that all the groups listed above "share a view of their physical environment as a “giving” place occupied by others who are also liable to be well-disposed and generous". In another point, she uses as an example of cooperative instincts the Hawaiian peoples' gifts to Captain Cook on arrival. Hawaiian gift-giving was part of an intricate patronage-based power system, where accepting gifts involved accepting authority as well; and far from assuming others are likely to be nice, Aboriginal societies such as the Eora peoples in NSW function through an intricate system of responsibilities/rights to country, violation of which once incurred punishments that could result in death. A sense that country is maintained, not changed, by humanity seems likely to come from long experience of survival and balance.
Hrdy's forays into modern society were just as stretched. This mainly involved discussing the role of fathers in parenting over time. This is hard stuff, as it intersects so clearly with debates about sex roles in modern society. Hrdy is trying to balance some of her most heartfelt views here: that we have evolved biological mechanisms to ensure high-quality child care, with an acknowledgement that much of modern sex roles are socially constructed. Part of this is looking at whether the involvement of fathers is essential to human survival. I wasn't convinced by her use of modern abandonment rates, and even less so by her suggestion that the fact that the rates of false parentage are much higher in the DNA tests requested by suspicious men than those done randomly means men have some kind of natural mechanism to identify infidelity (especially since the former is around 30%: 70% of men who suspect they are not the father - or are trying to avoid child support payments - actually are.). She is on much stronger ground with studies that show differential oxytocin responses between men and women, and explores the variety of human construction of families, which always involves mothers and sometimes involves intense father care. This points to what anthropology would say: we have the potential for strong male bonding to children, in fact, we have the potential to construct the societies we want to live in.
So now, as is my cranky wont, much of this review is discussing the weak spots. But none of this material is central to Hrdy's thesis, nor does it undermine her broad conclusions. The primate studies are wonderful, well-detailed and pointing to uncomfortable truths for the "aggressive men make us who we are" mob. I'll rea
edsantiago's review
5.0
Why us? What made one particular ape evolve into what we now are? Hrdy convincingly argues that cooperative parenting is what set the stage. A baby with many carers needs to grasp critical social skills. Hrdy draws upon evidence from the usual suspects: human hunter-gatherer societies and other primate species. Plus present-day and historical research demonstrating the importance of maternal grandmothers to infant survival and success rates.
Winding but always gripping, this is another important book for understanding who we are. It builds upon much of the latest understanding of human evolution. If you haven't been keeping up-to-date, prepare to have some of your fundamental preconceptions tossed out.
Winding but always gripping, this is another important book for understanding who we are. It builds upon much of the latest understanding of human evolution. If you haven't been keeping up-to-date, prepare to have some of your fundamental preconceptions tossed out.
gnome_friend's review
4.0
One of the few books attempting to explain "what makes us human" without discounting how we are still fundamentally primates and not of a radically different essence than other living things. Humans have developed a distinctive type of relationship to others due to a history of cooperative breeding among kin. This book explores the evolutionary steps since our common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos that have contributed to our longer lifespans and community-based child-rearing systems. While it does still present a narrow definition of "sapience" and sometimes neglect bonobo traits in reconstructing ape ancestors, I find the logic presented here quite compelling and useful in understanding how our social structures could better serve children.
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