Mothers and Others

The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding

| 4.28 | 504 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Carol Gilligan, Paul Seabright, Alison Gopnik, and 3 others. See all reviews

Ranked #28 in Evolutionary Psychology

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... more
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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Mothers and Others from the world's leading experts.

Carol Gilligan Hrdy is an evolutionary anthropologist and her research challenges the widely held view that the nuclear family is the traditional or original human family. (Source)

Paul Seabright Hrdy has done more than any other individual to bring a sophisticated understanding of biology to the heart of a feminist perspective that we can live with in the 21st century. (Source)

Alison Gopnik She makes the very interesting argument that our particular evolutionary niche is such that we can’t just depend on mothers to provide care. (Source)

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