Rating: 
Summary: At last, the mysteries of motherhood revealed...
Review: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's book Mother Nature is really a wonderful book. A complex combination of history, anthropology, sociobiology, and psychology, this is an ambitious look at how and why mothers act with their kids. I had a wonderful time reading it, despite my initial concern about the length (it just whizzes by!) and I loved the visuals. My particular favorite is the chapter titled "Three Men and a Baby" -- Guys out there, Listen Up!!
Rating: 
Summary: This book blew my mind!
Review: Sarah Hrdy demolishes many long-held cultural icons with this wide-ranging study of the nature of motherhood. She is not, however, merely a nullifier of perceived wisdom. Her aim is to encourage fuller knowledge of where humans are placed in the realm of the animal kingdom. Motherhood, the essential point of how evolution works, is examined here as fully as current research can achieve. Hrdy shows how the role of "mother" and "woman" have been inextricably linked through much of Western history. Unlike other animals, humans can set ideals for behaviour, ordaining how mothers "ought to behave." Deviance from these perceived "norms" has led to various social disruptions, including the famous witchcraft scares. Ignorance of the evolutionary roots of motherhood have led to a mind-set Hrdy sets out to dispel in this excellent work. She addresses motherhood with a mind almost unfettered by myths. Almost, because she is quite candid about her own feelings and experiences. Not all her emotions were faced with total detachment.Motherhood, she declares, is anything but the simple mythology of unrestrained devotion. Across all Nature, mothers and their offspring wage ongoing competition. The issue is resources. Infants, all infants, demand as much as a mother can give, and more. Mothers have to support their infants, but inevitably are occupied with other responsibilities, not the least of which may be the infant's siblings. There are others beyond the mother-infant tie to which she must respond. If her species is male-dominated, she may face his abuse. Worse, she may be confronted by invasion by an outside male. In some species, that spells the doom of her infant. Hrdy has studied this and related aspects of motherhood among many species, and expresses her own shock at the discovery of primate infanticide. Mothers must maintain many elements in balance, with but a gentle pressure on the scale resulting in disaster. Family size, role in the family and in the group, location, changing conditions, all contribute to the complexity surrounding a mother's relationship with her offspring. In humans, this complicated arrangement carries the added burden of a wholly dependent child. Even monkey young can cling to a foraging mother. Human babies must be carried. In our evolutionary past, this condition made the pair vulnerable to predators. Hrdy coins the phrase "alloparent" applied to another option - allocating care of the baby to someone else. In the modern world, of course, we call it "day care." Allomothers exist in many primate species, however. "Care-giving" isn't just an urban condition. "Allomothering" historically has led to some disreputable practices, from child slavery to outright abandonment. Hrdy cites horrifying statistics for infants abandoned at foundling homes. Still, we have no reason to doubt her numbers. Orphans, like other prisoners, are a forgotten element in civilized society. There's another side to allomothering among humans. What to do with women who are no longer able to bear children - the uniquely human phenomenon known as "menopause"? Hrdy's response typically focuses on evolutionary roots. Women no longer hindered by their own offspring are ideal care-givers. With their experience and wisdom, they readily handle child care and other activities. The "granny" evolved in humans in large part due to infant dependence, Hrdy stresses. It was a significant step in forming the human community. Hrdy's free-flowing style and ready wit make this important book highly readable and informative. She's done, or drawn on, a wealth of research to produce it, presenting riches of information without resorting to pedantry. It's an extraordinary accomplishment, deserving your fullest attention, your gender notwithstanding.
Rating:
Summary: Tumbling the icons
Review: Sarah Hrdy demolishes many long-held cultural icons with this wide-ranging study of the nature of motherhood. She is not, however, merely a nullifier of perceived wisdom. Her aim is to encourage fuller knowledge of where humans are placed in the realm of the animal kingdom. Motherhood, the essential point of how evolution works, is examined here as fully as current research can achieve. Hrdy shows how the role of "mother" and "woman" have been inextricably linked through much of Western history. Unlike other animals, humans can set ideals for behaviour, ordaining how mothers "ought to behave." Deviance from these perceived "norms" has led to various social disruptions, including the famous witchcraft scares. Ignorance of the evolutionary roots of motherhood have led to a mind-set Hrdy sets out to dispel in this excellent work. She addresses motherhood with a mind almost unfettered by myths. Almost, because she is quite candid about her own feelings and experiences. Not all her emotions were faced with total detachment. Motherhood, she declares, is anything but the simple mythology of unrestrained devotion. Across all Nature, mothers and their offspring wage ongoing competition. The issue is resources. Infants, all infants, demand as much as a mother can give, and more. Mothers have to support their infants, but inevitably are occupied with other responsibilities, not the least of which may be the infant's siblings. There are others beyond the mother-infant tie to which she must respond. If her species is male-dominated, she may face his abuse. Worse, she may be confronted by invasion by an outside male. In some species, that spells the doom of her infant. Hrdy has studied this and related aspects of motherhood among many species, and expresses her own shock at the discovery of primate infanticide. Mothers must maintain many elements in balance, with but a gentle pressure on the scale resulting in disaster. Family size, role in the family and in the group, location, changing conditions, all contribute to the complexity surrounding a mother's relationship with her offspring. In humans, this complicated arrangement carries the added burden of a wholly dependent child. Even monkey young can cling to a foraging mother. Human babies must be carried. In our evolutionary past, this condition made the pair vulnerable to predators. Hrdy coins the phrase "alloparent" applied to another option - allocating care of the baby to someone else. In the modern world, of course, we call it "day care." Allomothers exist in many primate species, however. "Care-giving" isn't just an urban condition. "Allomothering" historically has led to some disreputable practices, from child slavery to outright abandonment. Hrdy cites horrifying statistics for infants abandoned at foundling homes. Still, we have no reason to doubt her numbers. Orphans, like other prisoners, are a forgotten element in civilized society. There's another side to allomothering among humans. What to do with women who are no longer able to bear children - the uniquely human phenomenon known as "menopause"? Hrdy's response typically focuses on evolutionary roots. Women no longer hindered by their own offspring are ideal care-givers. With their experience and wisdom, they readily handle child care and other activities. The "granny" evolved in humans in large part due to infant dependence, Hrdy stresses. It was a significant step in forming the human community. Hrdy's free-flowing style and ready wit make this important book highly readable and informative. She's done, or drawn on, a wealth of research to produce it, presenting riches of information without resorting to pedantry. It's an extraordinary accomplishment, deserving your fullest attention, your gender notwithstanding.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive
Review: Sarah Hrdy takes pains to avoid trying to interpret the data to support ideological political or feminist views of motherhood. She is very clear that her inspiration to write the book was that her observations did not match with her prior assumptions. The result is a view of "mother nature" that will both support and undermine any existing sociological ideology. It's funny to see how politically conservative readers are ranting about the work being tainted by feminist bias. In fact, Hrdy's major success is to illustrate the extent to which previous views of motherhood have been tainted by masculinist bias and wishful thinking.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for any evolutionary psychologist
Review: So many great little factoids. My favorite topics include family planning (abortion, infanticide), maternal bonding, the adaptiveness of menopause, females in social structure, and lots of other tidbits I wish more authors would cover. The most fascinating thing is that these topics come up in the animal kingdom, not just with us. Only complaint might be that it's a dense read, and doesn't have a nice "backdrop" to organize it like Robert Wright's books (which I highly recommend). For this reason, you might need to read it twice to get everything. The facts themselves are tremendous, however. This book illustrates many more complexities about females that her male contemporaries might gloss over. Hrdy offers balance to anyone who's read other books on the same topic -- albeit great ones -- by male authors. (Come on, they can't help it.) One more interesting thing that Hrdy adds is that science in her field is limited because neither feminists nor conservatives want to explore the evolutionary basis of womanhood. For conservatives, they know they are baby machines. For feminists, all that matters is that women are now free. Hrdy takes issue with both camps.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant, must-read synthesis
Review: The reader of Mother Nature is in for a thorough treat. In its most fundamental essentials, the game of life comes down to competitive reproduction: which individuals--which lineages--produce the most young that also survive and reproduce. Sara Hrdy presents fascinating facts relating to motherhood, many little known or appreciated, that reveals the essentials of the human struggle to produce offspring and keep them alive. How has striving for power and status by females been critical to the survival of their lineages? Why does breast-feeding prevent pregnancy sometimes but not others? What about genetic changes affecting reproductive behavior in humans? There have been roughly 400 generations of humans since the Neolithic, and it has been proven (in fish, for example) that significant evolutionary changes can occur in the DNA of a species in only 40 generations; what sorts of changes may have occurred in reproducing humans? What are the causes of infanticide, by males and mothers? By presenting the research behind such facts in roughly historical sequence and because of her personal acquaintance with many of the primary researchers and theoreticians, readers get not only answers to the questions, but a wonderful sense of how science works and a feeling for the personalities who have toiled to find the truth as opposed to myth. Sex: Is it true that Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars? Hrdy's brilliant synthesis of over a hundred years of primarily biological and anthropological study explains how and why this catchy generalization does capture deep truth about the sexes. Children: Ever wanted to know what children need--what your child needs bare minimum--to grow into a confident caring adult with maximum potential for emotional and intellectual achievement? Assumptions of the past suggest the answer is a selfless, utterly devoted and caring mother. And we know what guilt is heaped on the head of any parent who even suspects he or she is denying this full-time, selfless sort of caretaking. But the answer, arduously won by the labors of hundreds if not thousands of biologists and anthropologists and explained by Hrdy with charming wit and style, is both astonishing and liberating. Here are three pivotal quotes: "All early caregivers become the emotional equivalent of kin." (p. 509) "Caretakers need not be the mother, or even one person, but they have to be the same caretakers." (p. 508, emphasis mine). "Any (committed) caretaker is capable of communicating the message infants desperately seek--'You are wanted and will not be set aside.'" (p. 509) Much of the book is an explanation and exploration of the basis for these provocative generalizations. If we want to create a social environment that is baby-friendly and human-friendly, what are the required fundamental ingredients for such a social world? If the goal is confident and caring adults, then Mother Nature is an extraordinary synthesis that, in my view, makes the outline of these needed ingredients quite clear. So the question now becomes, have we the will to provide the incentives--laws and resources--that will allow us to fill in the details and then act to move us toward that desired outcome? Mother Nature is a "must read" for anyone concerned with childhood and human development.
Rating: 
Summary: the politicization of anthropology
Review: This book is an egregious example of feminist politics masquerading as disinterested science. For those of you who believe, as I do, that academia has become utterly degenerate and corrupt, look no further. Hrdy carefully sifts through the primate evidence, accepting it when it suits her larger political ends, rejecting it when it does not. For example, as a self-proclaimed feminist, she necessarily believes that women are just as sexually driven as men. Her proof? Female monkeys copulate like crazy! Likewise, as a good feminist, she is constrained to believe that men are just as maternal as women. However, nowhere in the primate wild is this the case, so she concludes here that male monkeys are irrelevant and that human males are just not socialized to be maternal! Most of the book is similarly incoherent and confused. The problem with anthropologists like Hrdy is that they rely upon the unexamined contents of their own personalities to make sweeping generalizations about mankind, engaging in an unwitting but transparent form of autobiography. The one area where she redeems herself is in her begrudging acceptance of Bowlby's insight that babies are born with certain in-built needs that do not necessarily conform to a feminist agenda. But what she fails to understand is that Bowlby did not achieve his great insights into bonding and attachment simply by looking at monkeys, but by undergoing a lengthy psychoanalysis which gave him a first hand, subjective understanding of how HUMAN personality development hinges on the earliest attachment to the mother. If you actually have to study monkeys to discover something so obvious, you're already lost.
Rating:
Summary: Same book, new name...
Review: This book was first published as __Mother Nature: A history of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection__. If you are interested in perusing numerous reviews, simply check the earlier title.
Rating:
Summary: Evolution from a female viewpoint
Review: This is a fascinating look at evolution with particular reference to the female of the species. Packed with fascinating information about female behaviour through the ages. Descriptions of life among hunter-gatherer groups are particularly interesting. Subjects like infanticide, wetnursing, abandonment of infants, etc are gone into in great detail. I learnt a lot from this book. I particularly enjoyed the splendidly bloodthirsty lullabye from the Napoleonic era printed at the end of this book, my children love it. One small complaint, at one point in this book Ms. Hrdy compares housewives to laboratory rats. Now, I am used to the abuse routinely heaped on housewives, but this is really going a little too far. The big difference between a laboratory rat and a housewife is that I, a housewife, can leave my house any time I like (maybe it's different in America, perhaps housewives are kept locked up there, I don't know), and I frequently do. i have alot more freedom of movement than I would if I were, say, stuck in an office all day long. I quite accept Ms. Hardy' point that children do not have to be cared for full-time by their mothers, but it would be nice if she could refrain from abusing those of us who actually enjoy being full-time carers.
Rating:
Summary: Evolution from a female viewpoint
Review: This is a fascinating look at evolution with particular reference to the female of the species. Packed with fascinating information about female behaviour through the ages. Descriptions of life among hunter-gatherer groups are particularly interesting. Subjects like infanticide, wetnursing, abandonment of infants, etc are gone into in great detail. I learnt a lot from this book. I particularly enjoyed the splendidly bloodthirsty lullabye from the Napoleonic era printed at the end of this book, my children love it. One small complaint, at one point in this book Ms. Hrdy compares housewives to laboratory rats. Now, I am used to the abuse routinely heaped on housewives, but this is really going a little too far. The big difference between a laboratory rat and a housewife is that I, a housewife, can leave my house any time I like (maybe it's different in America, perhaps housewives are kept locked up there, I don't know), and I frequently do. i have alot more freedom of movement than I would if I were, say, stuck in an office all day long. I quite accept Ms. Hardy' point that children do not have to be cared for full-time by their mothers, but it would be nice if she could refrain from abusing those of us who actually enjoy being full-time carers.
|
