Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species | Sarah Hrdy

Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species | Sarah Hrdy | Must-read for any woman or parent (especially working moms!)

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Mother Nature: Mat...

	Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species Sarah Hrdy Ballantine Books, 2000 - 752 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Maternal instinct--the all-consuming, utterly selfless love that mothers lavish on their children--has long been assumed to be an innate, indeed defining element of a woman's nature. But is it? In this provocative, groundbreaking book, renowned anthropologist (and mother) Sarah Blaffer Hrdy shares a radical new vision of motherhood and its crucial role in human evolution.

Hrdy strips away stereotypes and gender-biased myths to demonstrate that traditional views of maternal behavior are essentially wishful thinking codified as objective observation. As Hrdy argues, far from being "selfless," successful primate mothers have always combined nurturing with ambition, mother love with sexual love, ambivalence with devotion. In fact all mothers, in the struggle to guarantee both their own survival and that of their offspring, deal nimbly with competing demands and conflicting strategies.

In her nuanced, stunningly original interpretation of the relationships between mothers and fathers, mothers and babies, and mothers and their social groups, Hrdy offers not only a revolutionary new meaning to motherhood but an important new understanding of human evolution. Written with grace and clarity, suffused with the wisdom of a long and distinguished career, Mother Nature is a profound contribution to our understanding of who we are as a species--and why we have become this way.

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A must read for any evolutionary psychologist

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.

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Must-read for any woman or parent (especially working moms!)

I find myself raving about this book to every woman (and man) I know. This is the most astounding and thought-provoking book I've read in recent years. Professor Hrdy is an emeritus professor of anthropology at UC Davis who puts the behavior of mothers and infants into an evolutionary context, using a comparative approach and drawing from sociobiology, anthropology, and psychology. I enjoyed this book from my perspectives as a student who did doctoral research in behavioral ecology; as a scientist who's tired of the superficial stereotype of instinctive, selfless maternal devotion; and most profoundly as a mother who's trying somehow to balance the equation of doing good for my family, myself, and the world as an ecologist with a conservation group. I appreciated the fact that she did not just rely on her own research on langur monkeys, but extensively reviewed other studies (and pointed out the dearth of studies that challenge societal assumptions that all mothers should care for every infant under any circumstance). She also entertains different hypotheses instead of just staking out a prescription based on an idealized version from one point in human evolutionary history (i.e. romanticizing hunter-gatherer societies), as seen in anthropologist Meredith Small's "Our Babies, Ourselves", which is also a wonderful book, but lacks the breadth of Hrdy's scholarship.

I frequently read this book as I rocked and nursed my infant son, which made everything more vivid to me. Hrdy writes with grace and humor about topics such as the origins of lactation (the rapture and thrall of oxytocin), the sensual (and hormonal) appeal of infants (so luscious you want to eat `em up). I was fascinated by the many ways that mothers seek to secure resources for their children (such as the tradition of godparents, or women's "unnatural" ambitions in the workplace). But reading the tragic chapters in European history of unsuccessful wet-nursing and wholescale infant abandonment while nursing my baby was almost more than I could bear.

One theme Hrdy reiterates throughout the book is how mothers throughout history forge workable compromises between infant needs and maternal ambition. She shares her experiences as a mother and scientist, and reflections from other women in the field. I found myself cheering "Yes!" in her final chapters, when she steers the debate of working mothers away from the gender politics of "Is it bad for infants when mothers work?" to the more critical question "How can we ensure that infants are cared for as lovingly and securely as kin?" whether that's by the mother or 'allomothers' [relatives or helpers who care like mothers]. "All early caregivers become the emotional equivalents of kin. Any caretaker is capable of communicating the message infants desperately seek - `You are wanted and will not be set aside'. (p. 509)" While the mother is uniquely equipped to meet that need, with her physical contact, her scent, her milk, she's not the only one who can answer when an infant seeks "the meeting eyes of love." Hrdy has written a passionate and scholarly book that is both an engaging read as well as a profoundly enlightening look into human nature. I cannot recommend this more highly.

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Evolution from a female viewpoint

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.

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An Honest Search For Truth

Biology has an agenda. Squirrels, whales, and crickets do not have our language facility, thus they do not have self-help books, preachers, or legions of well-meaning advisors. Yet they are born with the genetically provided rules (feelings) that allow them to be successful squirrels, wonderful whales, and competent crickets. We too have genetically provided rules, which sociobiologists and such are trying to discover. This wonderful book is the author's attempt to explain some of the conditions of motherhood, the relations between mothers and babies, and sometimes tough choices mothers have to make. This work is, in my opinion, magnificent.

NOTE TO REVIEWERS: If one starts off a review with phrases like "goofy liberal", "ranting conservative", or "clueless libertarian", readers like me read no further. Plus my estimation of the reviewer's intelligence is halved.

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A Triumph!

Utterly fascinating and, when it comes to understanding what makes human beings tick, is of greater reality, to my mind, than the phantasmagorical reaches of psychoanalysis, and more fundamental. Painstakingly researched. A scholarly book written in an accessible and engaging style.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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