* Apes on a Plane * Why Us and Not Them? * Why It Takes a Village * Novel Developments * Will the Real Pleistocene Family Please Step Forward? * Meet the Alloparents * Babies as Sensory Traps * Grandmothers among Others * Childhood and the Descent of Man * Notes * References * Acknowledgments * Index
In the study of mothering, Sarah Hrdy has no peer. In Mothers and Others, we are treated to Hrdy's infectious writing, taking the reader on a tour of our evolved history as a cooperatively parenting species. The ideas are big, bold, and brain-bending. -- Marc Hauser, author of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong Boldly conceived and beautifully written, Mothers and Others makes a strong case that we humans are (or should be) cooperative breeders. It is an indispensable contribution to the debate about how and why we came to be the most successful primate of them all. -- Melvin Konner, author of The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit As was the case for her earlier classic, Mother Nature, Sarah Hrdy's Mothers and Others is a brilliant work on a profoundly important subject. The leading scientific authority on motherhood has come through again. -- E. O. Wilson
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is one of the most original and influential
minds in evolutionary anthropology…[Her] gracefully written, expert
account of human behavior focuses on the positive, and its most
important contribution is to give cooperation its rightful place in
child care. Through a lifetime of pathbreaking work, she has
repeatedly undermined our complacent, solipsistic, masculine
notions of what women were meant ‘by nature’ to be. Here as
elsewhere she urges caution and compassion toward women whose
maternal role must be constantly rethought and readjusted to meet
the demands of a changing world.
*New York Review of Books*
An engaging and compelling argument for an evolutionary history of
cooperative offspring care that requires us to rethink entrenched
views about how we came to be human…Fascinating, readable…Her
thought-provoking book will interest students, specialists, and
general readers alike and should focus attention on the neglected
roles of mothers and others within human evolutionary theory.
*Science*
One of the boldest thinkers in her field…Her book is at once
entertaining, full of apt, often colorful anecdotes, sometimes
culled from her own experiences, and rich with information and case
studies…A sweeping new meta-paradigm.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Hrdy's lucid and comprehensively researched book takes us to the
heart of what it means to be human.
*Times Higher Education*
Another mind-expanding, paradigm-shifting, rigorously scientific
yet eminently readable treatise…Overflowing with fascinating
information and thinking. It's a book you read, pausing regularly
to consider the full import of what you just read…Sarah Blaffer
Hrdy has added another enormous building block to our thinking
about our origins with this new book. Our species is lucky to have
her.
*Globe and Mail*
Understanding the evolution of the human mind has become the holy
grail of modern evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary
psychology, and those who pursue it feel themselves closing in on
something big. Mothers and Others is a heroic contribution to this
quest…Once again, Hrdy has woven together strands of material from
many sources into an elegant tapestry of insight and logic,
emblazoned with her vision of who we are, and why.
*Evolutionary Psychology*
Our capacity to cooperate in groups, to empathize with others and
to wonder what others are thinking and feeling—all these traits,
Hrdy argues, probably arose in response to the selective pressures
of being in a cooperatively breeding social group, and the need to
trust and rely on others and be deemed trustworthy and reliable in
turn.
*New York Times*
For as long as she's been a sociobiologist, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has
been playfully dismantling traditional notions of motherhood and
gender relations…Hrdy paints a picture of a cooperative breeding
culture in which parenting duties were spread out across a network
of friends and relatives. The effect on our development was
profound.
*Salon*
Beginning with her opening conceit of apes on an airplane (you
wouldn't want to be on this flight) and continuing through her
informed insights into the behavior of other species, Hrdy’s
reasoning is fascinating to follow.
*Scientific American*
Provocative…The most refreshing aspect of [this] book is the
challenge [it] offers to what we thought we already knew.
*Nature*
Compelling and wide-ranging…Hrdy sets out to explain the mystery of
how humans evolved into cooperative apes. The demands of raising
our slow-growing and energetically expensive offspring led to
cooperative child-rearing, she argues, which was key to our
survival.
*New Scientist*
One of the essential points of Mothers and Others is that
aggression and competition have been given far too central a place
in the standard accounts of how our species came into being. From
Charles Darwin onward, those accounts are mostly the work of men,
and Hrdy points out in meticulous detail how partial and biased was
their understanding of the remote past…Mothers and Others offers
enormous rewards. It is not only revolutionary; it is also wise and
humane.
*Calgary Herald*
As was the case for her earlier classic, Mother Nature, Sarah
Hrdy's Mothers and Others is a brilliant work on a profoundly
important subject. The leading scientific authority on motherhood
has come through again.
*E. O. Wilson*
In the study of mothering, Sarah Hrdy has no peer. In Mothers and
Others, we are treated to Hrdy's infectious writing, taking the
reader on a tour of our evolved history as a cooperatively
parenting species. The ideas are big, bold, and brain-bending.
*Marc Hauser, author of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our
Universal Sense of Right and Wrong*
Boldly conceived and beautifully written, Mothers and Others makes
a strong case that we humans are (or should be) cooperative
breeders. It is an indispensable contribution to the debate about
how and why we came to be the most successful primate of them
all.
*Melvin Konner, author of The Tangled Wing: Biological
Constraints on the Human Spirit*
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