You can get an earful about "mother nature" from any of a variety of viewpoints. We have built up tremendous mythology about this seemingly simple role. But the sheer volume of emotion and elaborate explanations "mother nature" conjurs serves as a clue that this entity is actually very complex.
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is a prominent sociologist with additional interest in several adjacent worlds, including primatology and psychology. This massive tome with its authoritative title, "Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species", gives a solid, scientific account of just what nature really has to do with motherhood. And it's not what you might expect. This book gets a "strong +" because of its importance, although I did have a few quibbles.
"Maternal instinct" is usually thought of as the involuntary, pure, loving, caring behavior of a mother toward every child she bears. Throughout the book, Hrdy reveals slowly, from a variety of angles, that nothing so simplistic exists in mammal mothers of any species. Hrdy draws examples from many animals to show the variety of maternal responses to offspring. Furthermore, she talks about many different human cultures, from Pacific Islanders to !Kung "Bushmen" to 19th-century Parisians.
One thing I really liked about her approach is that she never assumes human behavior is completely analogous to that of other animals. (I get tired of studies about rats, birds, or lemurs that are applied uncritically to humans. I'm supposed to have sympathy for rapists because male rats routinely force themselves on females?). Hrdy is careful to distinguish the powerful influence of human culture and our ability to think abstractly from the more limited situation of other animals, even non-human primates. But nonetheless, the similarities are obvious and relevant. It's not like motherhood was invented along with humans; we have a strong evolutionary legacy happening deep in our brains, and its influence is very real. One particularly interesting observation is that monkey mothers offer the best approximation of "unconditional love for each infant." Human mothers are far more likely to practice infanticide or otherwise abandon their babies.
The richness of information in "Mother Nature" is staggering. Nearly every page you will learn something about maternal behavior that you didn't know. This book made me realize how limited our discourse about motherhood is. The popular information on the primatology and sociology of motherhood is shaped far too much by political agendas.
And why is that? Hrdy devotes considerable effort to explaining the politics of motherhood, which exists in nearly all animals. In a world of uncertain paternity, control of females (or more precisely, female sexual behavior) is a primary concern. Elaborate systems are designed to ensure that a female mates in the way the male wants her to.
But of course, females are just as smart as males, and subject to the same evolutionary pressures. Over the eons, females have developed strategies to subvert the male control (and indeed, to control the males right back). The result is the complicated, delicate balance we see today, where males are only partially certain which offspring are theirs, and females can only partially count on males to help with childcare. (Or, more broadly to include many species, females can only partially count on males not to kill their children). Reproduction is a complex negotiation, and one that is fraught with danger.
In the real world, many offspring die. Some succumb to disease or predators (or infanticidal males), while others suffer because it is simply a lean year or because an older sibling takes too many resources. Or perhaps the mother gets sick, or cannot find sufficient help from friends and relatives while she is burdened with a young infant. Life is uncertain, and both mothers and babies know that.
Thus, both mothers and babies have strategies to increase their life chances. Mothers want to raise a small number of healthy children, which of course can only be accomplished if the mother stays alive and healthy herself. This means, first and foremost, spacing births appropriately. Most mothers cannot handle 3 children under the age of 5-- dare I say it, that is simply not natural. Luckily, nature has a solution: lactation prevents conception. So breastfeeding, for as long as several years, has long been a maternal strategy for ensuring infant survival. One of the most unnatural periods of recent history was the "wetnursing rage" of some 19th-century European societies. Sending children to wet nurses meant more and more babies, spaced too closely. People went into poverty trying to pay for the kids and the wet nurses, and overall health suffered. In some "foundling homes," where people placed their "extra" babies, as many as 90% died each year.
Another maternal strategy, at least among monkeys and primates (plus some other creatures), is to recruit "allomothers" (meaning "other than the mother") to help with infant care. This usually means young females who don't have children yet, but can also include older females, sisters, or even the father. (These days, it includes the day care center). The politics of allomothering gets very complicated. The mother must worry whether her child will be all right, and yet, she must trust someone because she needs to do a few things by herself each day. (Surely no one will bring her all her food). So the mother must win the loyalty of allomothers and must negotiate how much care they will do.
Sometimes, it just doesn't work out. There are too many negative factors surrounding the infant's situation. In order to increase the chances for the next child, for her previous children, or for herself, the mother must terminate investment in a child. This happens commonly in other animals, and also not infrequently in humans, when you look at the types of cultures that existed for 99% of our time on earth. This conclusion is not shocking in light of the multitude of facts presented in the book. In fact, it even makes sense. One of Hrdy's most powerful concepts is that being pro-life means being pro-choice. That is Nature's way.
This means that mothers are not automatically attached to every child that comes from their womb from the instant they set eyes upon it. They can't be.
Ah, but wait. The story's not over. The baby is fighting for its survival too-- and it too has strategies for maximizing its life chances. The final section in "Mother Nature" takes an intriguing step beyond most motherhood studies to view the situation from the infant's perspective.
Babies are cute for a reason. They are totally dependent on their mothers for survival right after birth. So they need to make sure mom finds them attractive and indeed irresistable. Human babies have evolved along with adult aesthetic sense into a form that we think is attractive-- which basically means fat. Human babies are much fatter than monkey or ape babies (which ironically makes their already difficult birth a little more difficult. But hey, it's worth it if Mom will invest in you for it).
To be fair, it's not just cuteness that makes babies and mothers bond. There are some chemical (ie, hormonal) effects going on too. But many of these occur simultaneously with lactation, which doesn't start for a couple days after birth. Mothers who stay with their children for a week are something like an order of magnitude less likely to be willing to abandon them than they would be right after birth. Presumably this "window" is the result of a balance between the infant's desire to force the mother to bond instantaneously, and the mother's desire for a more flexible arrangement in case circumstances turn out to be negative.
This process of "attachment" absorbs Hrdy's attention for much of the latter part of the book. It is fascinating topic in and of itself, of course, but more importantly, it is the nut of the political argument for much of the rhetoric about "maternal instinct." Hrdy takes the topic seriously. If there is indeed a critical attachment that occurs between mother and child, and which can be correlated to child well being (as it can in many cases), how can we justify views that downplay the importance of the mother relative to various allomothers (such as day care centers)? Will science demonstrate conclusively that the right wing was right all along?
First of all, the answer to that provocative question is an obvious No. The world of June Cleaver is totally unnatural by any standard of human history. Heck, even monogamy is not natural for humans. Nor is there sense to the right-wing opinion that boys need a Man around the house in order to develop properly. Science is not going to vindicate Jesse Helms.
But Hrdy's concern is that science may not vindicate the feminists either. It is not clear that children are infinitely adaptable and will suffer no effects from spending 8 hours a day with unrelated adults and various other children, none of whom are a stable group as people move in and out and schedules shift. The mother really is a special person who cannot be replaced. Children really do develop best socially when they interact with a small set of familiar people in a safe but stimulating setting.
I appreciated Hrdy's thorough treatment of this subject. This kind of honest appraisal of the science as well as cultural consideration is exactly what is needed in order to devise the best strategies for raising children in our modern (and highly novel) society. We haven't really had to deal with a situation like the one we're in-- ever. This is new territory, and we have a lot of work to do to understand the best way to adapt. "Mother Nature" provides many of the tools to get started, and to do a good job of it.
My niggling concern with this treatment, however, is the inherent double standard in bringing in evolutionary and "nature-based" arguments to deal with issues relating to women. I have no problem with what Hrdy did; my problem is with what we neglect in other areas of society.
When do we ever bring in concepts from primatology to decide whether men's actions are justified? When do we talk about whether certain institutions or behaviors of men are "natural" by comparing them to how primitive men must have lived in primitive societies? About the only time we do this is to "justify" negative actions like rape or war. (And we never do it to justify negative actions by women, such as infanticide).
I want to know what is "natural" about nuclear weapons, Las Vegas, and the Pope. Large-scale nation-states, organized religion, commercialized pornography, Intel processors, golden rice, insurance, and brain surgery. None of these is "natural," but we don't question their very essence. Indeed, we encourage men to build more, bigger, better, and faster versions of just about everything.
Men get a free ride concerning "human nature"-- their creativity and drive toward building things are celebrated as inherent and natural, while their sexual appetite and aggressiveness are excused as natural and hence irrepressible. Women get the opposite deal-- they are shackled by everything "natural". Apparently Nature creates restrictions for women and freedoms for men.
Thus, I think it is important to step back a little and ask what value we are going to place on "naturalness," and also what aspects of it we are going to reward. Men are rewarded for their natural drive to show off (which is real and well-documented in many species and human cultures), but they could just as easily be condemned for this behavior as inappropriate in our modern society. After all, infanticide is natural for women, but we have decided to condemn it in modern society. So after we decide that a certain action is "natural," we need to ask So what? Are we going to integrate that into our highly novel modern society? (Clearly, we have some choice. Maybe not 100%-- you can't stop breathing oxygen-- but some. Let's talk about it... rationally).
Hrdy's "Mother Nature" is a monumental work because it actually takes a cool-headed look at motherhood in all its glorious complexity. It is impossible to read it and still maintain a simplistic view of maternal instinct or the relationship between mothers, fathers, and infants. For that reason, it should be required reading for all politicians, feminists, fathers, and mothers. I had a few reservations about the defensive tone of Hrdy's examination of attachment, but nonetheless, hers was the most scientific treatment I've seen of the subject.
Give this book a try-- it's long, but it goes fast, and the writing style is engaging. You will learn something nearly every page.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2002
