I liked this book. Books such as Pinker's How the Mind Works and Ridley's Origins of Virtue cover some of the same ground, but Hrdy focuses on some issues that are more from a woman's point of view. It is a welcome addition to what is out there.

Everyone has a worldview that informs their interpretation of the evidence. Ridley seems to have a libertarian take on human evolution. Stephen Jay Gould seems to come at things from a more leftist angle. With Daniel Dennett, you get memes; with Pinker, you get a great critique of memes. Buss's textbook gives a good articulation of how to proceed in this area in a scientific fashion. Sobel and Wilson give a spirited defense of alturism.

Hrdy is usually careful to avoid making a direct carry-over from the behavior of other primates to human behavior. She is pretty good at keeping the speculation fairly close to the observations. Hrdy's ideas are often just as speculative as the next theorist's, but her more feminist take is refreshing. For example, the idea that perhaps the childcare offered by grandmothers has had an impact on the human lifespan is reasonably well argued and as plausible as other ideas. She is not as gifted a writer as Pinker, but the book reads well and the perspective is worthwhile.

At long last, a book on the nurturing impulse has been written without sentimentality or wishful thinking. Blaffer Hrdy brings her scientific training, intellectual drive, and obvious warmth and humor to this project. If you're a woman who values your full human potential as much as, or more, than your ability to populate, and if anyone has ever tried to make you feel guilty about such an "unnatural" set of priorities, this is the book for you. Especially valuable is Blaffer Hrdy's openly avowed love for her spouse and children; it serves to remind the reader that you're not reading a political manifesto, but deeply thought-out, sensible scholarship by a caring, gifted individual. If you're looking for slick excuses for your point of view, whatever it is, don't look here. If you seek understanding of what you are -- and what we all are -- then read this enjoyable book. Anyone who wants children certainly should.

As a wildlife biologist by training, I have often been leery of sociobiologists and the analogies they draw between human behavior and that of, say, ducks. With this in mind, I devoured this book until I had to return it to the library. I then haunted the library until it had gone through all 13 holds before I could get it back, several months later. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy takes a cross-cultural, historical and biological look at human and primate mothers. She makes it very clear that humans have used many, many ways to solve problems of childcare and the conflicts for resources between mothers and their infants and other older children. She uses other primate species not as proof of human ways so much as to re-evaluate and reflect on those human ways. She is a biologist, and she is very clear about not confusing what some primates do as proof for what humans do, whether closely or distantly related. "Mother Nature" gave me great insight into my relationship with my mother, my two younger brothers, my male partner, and my decision to delay reproduction. I enjoy my designation as an "allo-mother" (someone other than the mother who helps with childcare), and am pleased to learn that the level of protectiveness that I feel for the girls and young women in my Girl Scout troops have been biologically based: those who care for children, beyond the birth mothers, will have elevated levels of the hormone prolactin. I find it fascinating that my enjoyment of environmental education has a biological base!

This book also elevated my concern for the girls I work with who are teens, coming from teen mothers (who also came from teen mothers), who seem to be fast careening towards motherhood without the resources and the patience that are critical to successful rearing of children. I liked her discussion of how girls change from pre-adolescence to adolesence in foraging societies: The pre-adolescents are the girls who are more interested in learning childcare, as opposed to the adolescents, who are more interested in dating. Anecdotally, I would confirm this! In foraging societies, girls do not gain enough fat until their late adolescence to their early twenties, and thus they do not reproduce as early as their well-fed American counterparts. For me, this is all the more reason to take measures to mentor kids, so that they have children when they will it and are ready, rather than simply because they may be biologically capable of it.

This book deals mostly with primates. Despite the layperson style title, the book itself is quite scientific and detailed. This can be great for those educated in anthropology and sociobiology as it is very thorough, giving exact names and evolutionary history on the primates discussed, yet can seem a little dry to the layperson, especially if read for long stretches. However, layperson, do not despair. Hrdy will often use humour to lighten or better explain an idea and when she occasionally uses jargon it is usually tongue-in-cheek and always explained. Many of you will be attracted by the feminist-sounding title, but do not be fooled. Only rarely does the author tie in her observations with human behaviour. In fact, any feminism does not appear until the final 2% of the book and seems to simply be angry raving against the oppression of women, and is not linked as well as it could be to the previous 150 or so pages. Generally, however, I enjoyed the book, even though it contained more detail than I, as a layperson, actually needed. To anyone unhappy with the stereotype of the strong male in charge of his passive harem of females or with the aggressive male just using the females as a vessel for his genes, then this can shed new light on the way primates behave and are shaped by their biology. Tying in the information with the woman in the title is left up to the reader.