Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection [Hardcover]

Sarah Hrdy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 1999

We are tempted to think of maternal instinct as a quality a woman has or lacks.  But the belief that mothers instinctively nurture their offspring--one of the West's most cherished ideals and a view widely accepted even in scientific circles--has become increasingly controversial. Mother Nature presents a radical new way of understanding how mothers act and why, and how this new understanding is changing the way scientists think about how evolution works.  

Drawing on anthropology, history, literature, developmental psychology, and animal behavior, Sarah Hrdy examines the distinct biological and genetic elements that constitute maternal instinct. She strips away the biases implicit in conventional stereotypes of female nature to give us very different and provocative perspectives on maternal ambivalence, the links between maturity and ambition, mother love and sexual love, and why age-old tensions between the sexes persist--and are being played out today in efforts to control women's reproductive choices.

Combining decades of research with her own experience as a mother, Hrdy makes clear in this remarkable book what it means--from a historical and evolutionary perspective--to be a mother and explains how this knowledge has transformed our understanding of human development and behavior.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection should be required reading for anyone who happens to be a human being. In it, Hrdy reveals the motivations behind some of our most primal and hotly contested behavioral patterns--those concerning gender roles, mate choice, sex, reproduction, and parenting--and the ideas and institutions that have grown up around them. She unblinkingly examines and illuminates such difficult subjects as control of reproductive rights, infanticide, "mother love," and maternal ambition with its ever-contested companions: child care and the limits of maternal responsibility. Without ever denying personal accountability, she points out that many of the patterns of abuse and neglect that we see in cultures around the world (including, of course, our own) are neither unpredictable nor maladaptive in evolutionary terms. "Mother" Nature, as she points out, is not particularly concerned with what we call "morality." The philosophical and political implications of our own deeply-rooted behaviors are for us to determine--which can be done all the better with the kind of understanding gleaned from this exhaustive work.

Hrdy's passion for this material is evident, and she is deeply aware of the personal stake she has here as a woman, a mother, and a professional. This highly accomplished author relies on her own extensive research background as well as the works of others in multiple disciplines (anthropology, primatology, sociobiology, psychology, and even literature). Despite the exhaustive documentation given to her conclusions (as witness the 140-plus-page notes and bibliography sections), the book unfolds in an exceptionally lucid, readable, and often humorous manner. It is a truly compelling read, highly recommended. --Katherine Ferguson

From Publishers Weekly

Our culture's exalted view of motherhood, argues sociobiologist Hrdy in this iconoclastic study, is sentimentally appealing but fails to take into account the wide range of responses that comprise maternal "instincts," including many that may seem counterintuitive to reproductive goals. Using data from her own primate research as well as new evolutionary theories, literature and folklore, Hrdy, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California-Davis, shows that animal mothers make constant "trade-offs" to negotiate conflicts between their own needs and those of their offspringAoften based on the odds of their progeny's survival. Ironically, reproductive success has exacerbated pressures on human mothers, who must often care for multiple older offspring while simultaneously accommodating newborns. To cope, they may resort to the sexual selection of offspring, the use of helpers or various levels of withdrawal from particular babies, ranging from mild neglect to abandonment to infanticide. Hrdy's engaging though repetitive argument offers provocative new analyses of wet-nursing, the culling of offspring of the "wrong" sex (sometimes, surprisingly, boys) and even the adaptive behaviors newborns use to ensure their mothers' attachment. Though she is intent on rectifying male biases in biology, Hrdy rejects strident gender politics. Ample support and access to quality day care, she concludes, are essential to achieving the ideal that every infant be loved and nurtured. Agent, Mitchell Waters, Curtis Brown Inc.; 7-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (September 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679442650
• ISBN-13: 978-0679442653
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I have been recommending this book to everyone, July 13, 2000

By 

S. Kruger (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (Hardcover)

As a wildlife biologist by training, I have often been leery of sociobiologists and the analogies they draw between human behavior and that of, say, ducks. With this in mind, I devoured this book until I had to return it to the library. I then haunted the library until it had gone through all 13 holds before I could get it back, several months later. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy takes a cross-cultural, historical and biological look at human and primate mothers. She makes it very clear that humans have used many, many ways to solve problems of childcare and the conflicts for resources between mothers and their infants and other older children. She uses other primate species not as proof of human ways so much as to re-evaluate and reflect on those human ways. She is a biologist, and she is very clear about not confusing what some primates do as proof for what humans do, whether closely or distantly related. "Mother Nature" gave me great insight into my relationship with my mother, my two younger brothers, my male partner, and my decision to delay reproduction. I enjoy my designation as an "allo-mother" (someone other than the mother who helps with childcare), and am pleased to learn that the level of protectiveness that I feel for the girls and young women in my Girl Scout troops have been biologically based: those who care for children, beyond the birth mothers, will have elevated levels of the hormone prolactin. I find it fascinating that my enjoyment of environmental education has a biological base!

This book also elevated my concern for the girls I work with who are teens, coming from teen mothers (who also came from teen mothers), who seem to be fast careening towards motherhood without the resources and the patience that are critical to successful rearing of children. I liked her discussion of how girls change from pre-adolescence to adolesence in foraging societies: The pre-adolescents are the girls who are more interested in learning childcare, as opposed to the adolescents, who are more interested in dating. Anecdotally, I would confirm this! In foraging societies, girls do not gain enough fat until their late adolescence to their early twenties, and thus they do not reproduce as early as their well-fed American counterparts. For me, this is all the more reason to take measures to mentor kids, so that they have children when they will it and are ready, rather than simply because they may be biologically capable of it.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Factual, yet personal, January 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (Hardcover)

It's odd that some reviewers see this as an example of a feminist ignoring and bending facts to support feminist theory. I thought the author presented quite strong criticisms of feminism (for example, feminist claims that nursing is a socially constructed activity). In addition, one of the main points I took away from the book was decidedly UN-feminist: that male humans have been genetically selected to be LESS inclined to care for children than women are, because they can't be certain that any given child is really theirs. In contrast, since a woman knows that her child really is her child, she is MORE biologically inclined to care for it (depending on the circumstances, as Hrdy goes into at length). It did seem that Hrdy was herself not pleased with this conclusion, but discussed the issue at length nonetheless.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking, November 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection (Hardcover)

Fantastic book that combines science with literature, history, HUMOR (great illustrations), personal stories, feminist critique, science critique, speculation, political polemic, and weird facts. I especially recommend the book for people interested in biology, history of humanity, feminism, and parenting. Hrdy is sure to win a major award for this book. I read every page.