The Tending Instinct is a seminal work, tying together ideas and data from difficult-to-quantify areas such as the psychology of stress, the emotional and physical aspects of the act of nuturing, and its [especially long-term] effects, and the biochemistry of stress response in humans and other primates, in both the long and short term. She also discusses tending in society as a whole -- that is, the nurturing infrastructure of a society, those elements of day-to-day life that make it easy to tend or be tended. Ease of access to trusted caregivers for working parents, or medical care, educational or mentorship opportunities, for example.

Taylor is synthesizing, spanning disciplines to draw together different strands of research in biochemistry, psychology, and other arenas, to propose they demonstrate human beings are overridingly a tending species, a nurturing species. Success, for h. sapiens, is existing in a strong network of support, giving and taking as one's needs require. Our most successful humans are those who inspire, those who persuade, those who build coalitions to achieve a good for the entire group.

Fascinating stuff.

If you have ever wondered about how the other half of the sky copes with stress! If you have ever given any thought to the science of anthropology & how it has neglected the study of how women look at life. If you have had this needling question that "What if society is a lie?" & couldn't find any answers...then this book's for you, because Shelley E. Taylor asked a seemingly innocuous question which unearthed a fascinating idea!

THE TENDING INSTINCT is a powerful, transformative read. It deals with both old & new ideas about community, society, morality & how women & men think about their lives, how we interact & cope with stress.

Very good stuff! Well written, well-researched, informative & everso interesting. You will find yourself nodding & saying "Of course! I knew that!"

When Darwin wrote that man attains "a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands," he was echoing what had been known to be true since the time of Aristotle. Taylor explains clearly and with compelling authority why this traditional viewpoint is so wide of the mark.

In marketing, the discipline in which I work it is quite evident that the world of consumer commerce revolves around the tending and befriending instincts of woman. Taylor grasps the fundamental principles of marketing better than all the commonly used textbooks. The reason is they all start out from the Darwinian perspective that humans are at core selfish. If the human brain was a computer that was programmed by evolution then the dog-eat-dog perspective might be tenable. However mammals tend their young - they have to, so the urge to nurture is a necessary part of human nature. Taylor makes it abundantly clear that it is a feminine trait - not masculine.

This book is excellent at explaining the connection between befriending and stress. It makes an excellent companion book to Hrdy's book "Mother Nature," an anthropologist, also from UCLA, that explains more details about lactation and mothering.

For woman readers this book should be inspiring and validating. For men... well it is sobering and in spots embarassing.

Thank you Shelley!