Fionnáin reviewed Mothers and others by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Challenging Bias with Blinkers
3 stars
This book is a difficult one to review. On the one hand, it is a thorough and well researched anthology of anthropology and primatology that shows how human children (and some nonhuman) came to rely on the care of many actors, not just the immediate family or (as is popularly believed in anthropology) the mother. Hrdy writes well and accessibly, and questions accepted norms about child-rearing, particularly taking aim at this in the fifth chapter which finally confronts American bias toward a nuclear family (where the author is based).
On the other hand, the book makes some extraordinarily prejudiced assumptions that are themselves loaded with Western bias. There are repeated references to contemporary hunter-gatherer societies as if they represent past societies. Although Hrdy admires many of their traits, and she explores different systems of parenting and alloparenting, it is highly problematic that these societies are positioned as they are: At …
This book is a difficult one to review. On the one hand, it is a thorough and well researched anthology of anthropology and primatology that shows how human children (and some nonhuman) came to rely on the care of many actors, not just the immediate family or (as is popularly believed in anthropology) the mother. Hrdy writes well and accessibly, and questions accepted norms about child-rearing, particularly taking aim at this in the fifth chapter which finally confronts American bias toward a nuclear family (where the author is based).
On the other hand, the book makes some extraordinarily prejudiced assumptions that are themselves loaded with Western bias. There are repeated references to contemporary hunter-gatherer societies as if they represent past societies. Although Hrdy admires many of their traits, and she explores different systems of parenting and alloparenting, it is highly problematic that these societies are positioned as they are: At one stage she refers to modern African societies as "both post- and pre-colonial"; of course, all contemporary society is postcolonial. In some paragraphs there is a leap of logic directly from "primate" to "African" (with an inference that the next step is "something else") that is careless, although I suspect it is never malicious as Hrdy writes with care about her subjects.
I am not an anthropologist and accept that this type of thinking is more common in that field, but still found these moments of embedded bias highly jarring while reading, spoiling some very good ideas that themselves are rightly questioning bias. By the ninth and final chapter, Hrdy presents her convincing arguments of mutual care well. Mothers and Others has some brilliant ideas and great information, despite its persistent problems. But it should certainly be read with this cachet in mind.