Mother Nature

Zusatztext "A truly monumental work! as elegant as it is insightful." -ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS Author of The Hidden Life of Dogs "A BRILLIANT! LIBERATING BOOK ON A PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT SUBJECT." -E.O. WILSON Author of Consilience "THOROUGH! THOUGHTFUL! AND CLEARLY WRITTEN . . . A TROVE OF FACTUAL TREASURES . . . A cornucopia of data and ideas about the biology and behavior of mothers great and small." -Scientific American Informationen zum Autor Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis and a fellow of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The author of three previous books, including The Woman That Never Evolved , she lives in northern California. Klappentext 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.Being a mother has never been simple. Today, modern medicine, safe water, stored food, pasteurized milk, cradles, and houses with walls make it easier than ever before to keep a baby alive. Rubber-nippled baby bottles and daycare centers especially designed and licensed for the care of the very young provide working mothers, even those with weeks-old babies, with alternatives to the only two viable options previously available: keep your baby close or find a wet nurse. The availability of breast pumps and freezers means that more women can both breast-feed and spend hours separated from their babies. Above all, there is birth control, which permits a woman to consciously override her ovaries and choose when, or if, she will bear children. Ultrasound and amniocentesis enable women to spend decades in a career and still look forward to bearing a healthy infant. Far from simplifying motherhood, these novel choices have exposed tensions just beneath the cheery surface of our traditional assumptions about what mothers should be. Today, mothers in developed countries, and with them fathers and children, enter uncharted terrain. Without anyone raising their hands to volunteer, we have become guinea pigs in a vast social experiment that reveals what women who can control reproduction really want to do. Children, too, are finding out what it means to be born to a complex and multifaceted creature who has an unprecedented range of options. It is an experiment-in-progress, with two outcomes already apparent. First, the decisions that mothers make do not always conform to our conventional expectations about innately tender, selfless creatures. Second, whatever today's mother decides is likely to becontroversi...

"A truly monumental work, as elegant as it is insightful."
-ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS
   Author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

"A BRILLIANT, LIBERATING BOOK ON A PROFOUNDLY IMPORTANT SUBJECT."
-E.O. WILSON
   Author of Consilience

"THOROUGH, THOUGHTFUL, AND CLEARLY WRITTEN . . . A TROVE OF FACTUAL TREASURES . . . A cornucopia of data and ideas about the biology and behavior of mothers great and small."
-Scientific American

Autorentext

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

Klappentext

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.

Zusammenfassung
“[A] magisterial survey of childbearing through the ages . . . It wams the heart to witness the fierce loyalty this sophisticated feminist professor of anthropology . . . bears towards her paleolithic sisters.”—San Francisco Chronicle

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.

Leseprobe
Being a mother has never been simple. Today, modern medicine, safe water, stored food, pasteurized milk, cradles, and houses with walls make it easier than ever before to keep a baby alive. Rubber-nippled baby bottles and daycare centers especially designed and licensed for the care of the very young provide working mothers, even those with weeks-old babies, with alternatives to the only two viable options previously avai…