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A review by megatsunami
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species by Sarah Hrdy
4.0
A feminist Darwinian! Bring it on. If you want to know about the biology of motherhood, this is the book for you. True, it's kind of long and full of scientific and anthropological detail. But it's also well written, interesting, and even funny. I really appreciated that the author is committed to understanding what it means to be a mother (and, to a lesser extent, any parent) without getting sentimental or making assumptions. At times, she shares her own anecdotes of being a mother (including being a working mother) to illustrate her points.
I didn't understand everything in this book, and I didn't agree with everything either. I'm still skeptical about evolutionary psychology, and find the near-exclusive focus on natural selection to be somewhat reductionist (Hrdy doesn't discount the impacts of culture and temperament, but doesn't spend much time on them). I either don't understand or don't agree with the whole "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" concept. Also, there were a few times when I thought she contradicted herself (but frankly I didn't really have the energy to track down the conflicting statements in such a long book). I thought some of her forays into developmental psychology were skewed toward Bowlby and attachment theory, sometimes at the expense of other important concepts.
A few of the things I learned about in this book (though there are many more):
- Mothers have always been willing to delegate care to "alloparents" (other caregivers), as long as safe care is available. (In some environments, safe care was not likely to be available, so mothers and infants have had longer-term exclusive bonds.)
- Mothers have always been ambivalent about having children, usually for good reason (e.g. if they don't have kin or "alloparents" - including fathers - to help raise the child, or if resources are scarce). There has always been infanticide (prior to availability of safe abortions), usually by abandonment/ exposure. In some cultures this has reached epidemic proportions (43% of infants baptized in 1840's Florence were abandoned!).
- Infants are cute for a reason: to convince mothers/ tribes not to abandon them. (OK, I didn't learn that from this book... I learned it from my infants.)
- Mothers have always been ambitious in their work (whether that is foraging for nuts and berries, or running experiments in a lab). One could argue, as Hrdy does, that this is for evolutionary reasons (to increase their offspring's status and therefore their chance of reproductive success), or else one could argue that it's a human trait to love useful work ("The pitcher cries for water to carry/ and a person for work that is real." - Marge Piercy), but regardless, boo-ya to those who claim working mothers are unnatural.
I didn't understand everything in this book, and I didn't agree with everything either. I'm still skeptical about evolutionary psychology, and find the near-exclusive focus on natural selection to be somewhat reductionist (Hrdy doesn't discount the impacts of culture and temperament, but doesn't spend much time on them). I either don't understand or don't agree with the whole "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" concept. Also, there were a few times when I thought she contradicted herself (but frankly I didn't really have the energy to track down the conflicting statements in such a long book). I thought some of her forays into developmental psychology were skewed toward Bowlby and attachment theory, sometimes at the expense of other important concepts.
A few of the things I learned about in this book (though there are many more):
- Mothers have always been willing to delegate care to "alloparents" (other caregivers), as long as safe care is available. (In some environments, safe care was not likely to be available, so mothers and infants have had longer-term exclusive bonds.)
- Mothers have always been ambivalent about having children, usually for good reason (e.g. if they don't have kin or "alloparents" - including fathers - to help raise the child, or if resources are scarce). There has always been infanticide (prior to availability of safe abortions), usually by abandonment/ exposure. In some cultures this has reached epidemic proportions (43% of infants baptized in 1840's Florence were abandoned!).
- Infants are cute for a reason: to convince mothers/ tribes not to abandon them. (OK, I didn't learn that from this book... I learned it from my infants.)
- Mothers have always been ambitious in their work (whether that is foraging for nuts and berries, or running experiments in a lab). One could argue, as Hrdy does, that this is for evolutionary reasons (to increase their offspring's status and therefore their chance of reproductive success), or else one could argue that it's a human trait to love useful work ("The pitcher cries for water to carry/ and a person for work that is real." - Marge Piercy), but regardless, boo-ya to those who claim working mothers are unnatural.