Mothers, Others and the Giving Place by K.Linda Kivi

I have long been fascinated about fear, fears about the natural world in particular, since those fears very much colour our sense of place and our interactions with the natural world. Which of our terrors – be they of heights, snakes, spiders, mice, bears, falling trees, etc. – are rooted in ancient instincts and which are outgrowths of our current cultures? Obviously, our places of discomfort have been used by modern media and political interests to manipulate us but I’d assumed that the answer to my question about the root of our fears was largely unanswerable. Wrong.

My friend Karen Warkentin, professor of Biology at Boston University, gifted me with a wonderful book recently. Evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding is a compelling and informative exploration of the theory that cooperative breeding among humans has given rise to both our current morphology as well as our cultures as distinct from the other great apes. The book is chock-a-block full with fascinating comparisons between our child rearing practices and those of other primate and mammalian species as well as how the influence of multiple caregivers affects human psycho-social development. I was particularly captivated by the information on the role of grandmothers and post-menopausal women in the survival rates and development of children in a community.

Following on my observations about the fearful children of “the World Wreckers” in my previous blog entry, I was delighted to encounter a mention of how our relationships with other humans might affect our relationships to the natural world. Synthesizing the work of a group of psychologists led by Barry Hewlett, the team found that, “the way children interact with their caretakers influences their sense of belonging and shapes how they feel about the environment they live in.”

The children of traditional foragers (as well as the adults), tended to “view of their physical environment as a “giving” place occupied by others who are also liable to be well-disposed and generous.” In contrast, the children of other subsistence folk such as farmers or those of upper middle-class Americans, were more likely to be fearful of strangers and of their environment. Yet even among farmers and post-industrialites, “children who were accustomed to multiple caregivers grew up less likely to fear strangers.”

If indeed the isolation experienced by infants in the nuclear family unit has given rise to people less positively connected to their environment, how in turn does that lack of connection play out in their lives? Are they likely to behave in more destructive manners towards the environment? Are they prone to be greedier, less concerned about their impact they might have on others with whom they share the finite resources of the planet? If there is even an inkling of these behaviours being rooted in our upbringings, wouldn’t that suggest the most radical act for the future of the planet would be to ensure that children are indeed raised by a village instead of just one mother and maybe a father?

Hrdy notes somewhere else in the book that the US government earmarked $1.6 billion for educational campaigns to reinforce the nuclear family; she comments that if that sum was put into better childcare options for working families, a culture that was more caring and compassionate might begin to re-emerge. The point here is that it is no coincidence that the greed of the wealthy is running rampant, destroying life support systems for all the inhabitants of Earth. Everyone’s tax moneys are being funneled into propaganda to maintain a system in which humans might evolve away from our origins as an empathetic, interactive species. She posits that “compassion and the quest for emotional connection will fade away as surely as sight in cave-dwelling fish” And without that curiosity and empathy for others, just what will our relationship to the natural world become?

So, are you game? Ready to trade in the nuclear family and return to our origins of communal care? By letting whole villages raise our children again, we might create the pre-conditions for the survival of our species and the planet we call home. Stay tuned as I look further into Hewlett’s research. In the meanwhile, read Hrdy’s book and learn something new about what makes us human.