Mothers and others
by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy · first published 2009
3mentions
1recommended by
3HN commenters
2022–2023first – last mentioned
33% recommend67% neutral
"Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution." "Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for,
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
…ground. I think there is a lot of common ground, both historically and today. Building on that will advance both Montessori pedagogy and the transformation of education. If you have not read “Founding Mothers and Others”, I highly recommend it. Many progressive schools were founded by women who studied with Montessori, sought to spread her pedagogy and gave her great respect and credit. Helen Salz and Flora Arnstein,founders…
on “The Miseducation of Maria Montessori” ↗…disagree, but I think the framing is overly pejorative and makes the likelihood of this outcome seem more tenuous than it really is. We do lots of things to help others because they make us feel nice. "Mothers and Others" by Sarah Hrdy argues that this tendency isn't just a fluke or a game-theoretic equilibrium of some kind between fundamentally self-interested agents, it's an ancient and deeply ingrained aspect of human…
on “GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language” ↗The book "Mothers and Others" discusses this at length, positing not only did mothers have much more "Alloparental" support in the past, but this was the key fact that allowed the evolution of our big brains. That is, alloparental…
on “Hunter-gatherer childcare suggests new key to mother and child well-being” ↗