Extensive care of children by people other than the mother is proposed to have selected for human social cognition and shortened birth intervals.
Human infants are costly and slow, and mothers in forager societies do not raise them alone. Hrdy's argument is that dependence on allomothers put a premium on infants able to read and elicit care, and on adults willing to give it, which would make sociality a consequence of the childcare arrangement rather than a precondition.
In practice
- A team that shares responsibility for a difficult account produces people skilled at reading each other.
- A household with three adults raises more children with less strain than one with two, at the same income.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is selection pressure: infants dependent on carers other than the mother gain from reading and appealing to several adults, which would favour social cognition, while shared care shortens the interval between births.
- In its favour
- Comparative and ethnographic support exists, since human mothers in forager societies do not raise children alone and cooperative breeders among other species show unusual social tolerance.
- Against it
- The inference from shared care to selection on cognition is an argument from plausibility rather than a tested causal claim, and the direction could run the other way, with existing social cognition making shared care possible.
- Standing
- Comparative and ethnographic support exists; the inference to selection on cognition is an argument from plausibility rather than a tested claim.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change