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Given the decline of extended family influence and other developments described in Mothers and Others, what does the changing nature of American...

According to Hrdy, as elaborated upon in her conclusion, advancing technological society has caused splintering of child-rearing support groups. These groups of related or nearly-related individuals are identified as alloparenting and allomothering groups. This splintering has resulted in changes to child-rearing, leaving human young with few individuals to identify with, be empathetic with and mind read with. The consequence of this change in child-rearing culture is already traceable in the diminishment of qualities that are distinctly, definitively human, a claim Hrdy backs up with contemporary studies. 


Further loss of these qualities due to, as Hrdy says, rapid continuing human evolution wherein traits that are not used are lost may lead to a future of humans who lack the altruistic, intersubjective qualities that make our species empathetic, mind-reading, and collaborative--that make us, as we now define it, human. Some of these losses would be to such qualities as these:


  • mind reading

  • empathy and compassion

  • intimacy

  • giving rituals

  • altruism

  • collaboration

The loss of these qualities in the evolutionary process would result in humans who are still human, but would they be "human in ways we now think of as distinguishing our species—that is, empathetic and curious about the emotions of others, shaped by our ancient heritage of communal care"?


In Hrdy's view and in my own, such intimate identification as comes from the development of intense mind reading and collaboration makes a woman's mother a better alloparent than her mother-in-law. In alloparenting, the greater affinity of a mother to a close blood relative (kin) than to a marriage relative (near-kin) may suggest that collaboration is limited to groups and individuals closely bound by empathy, intense mind-reading affinities, intense interest in and caring about the others' thoughts, and to those who are gift-givers rather than taking-competitors.

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