Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding

432 Pages·2009·5.12 MB·English

by  Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

mothers and others

Mothers and Others
The evoluTionary origins of
muTual unders Tanding
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press  Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, Eng land
Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
all rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer, 1946-
Mothers and others : the evolutionary origins of mutual
understanding / Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-03299-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-674-06032-6 (pbk.)
1. Mother and child. 2. Parental behavior in animals.
3. Child rearing--Psychological aspects. 4. Behavior evolution.
I. Title.
BF723.M55H73 2009
155.7—dc22 2008052936
For my children
and my children’s children

ConTenT s
1  Apes on a Plane  1
2  Why Us and Not Them?  33
3 Why It Takes a Village 65
4  Novel Developments  111
5  Will the Real Pleistocene Family
  Please Step Forward?  143
6  Meet the Alloparents  175
7  Babies as Sensory Traps  209
8  Grandmothers among Others  233
9  Childhood and the Descent of Man  273
Notes 297
References 341
Acknowledgments 403
Index 406

The leading problem in sociobiology today is explaining
why we have prosocial emotions.
—H. Gintis (2001)
Which is why we need to keep in mind that
. . . the causal chain of adaptive evolution begins with development.
—M. J. West-Eberhard (2003)