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In Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy explores maternal behavior from the perspective of evolutionary biology. Hrdy, a primatologist, describes parenting in primates and other animals. She compares the behavior of human mothers with the way other primates act. Hrdy's central premise is that the traditional portrayal of mothers, instinctively caring for and loving their children, is an oversimplification.

Hrdy analyzes how maternal behaviors, in people and animals, maximize the number of children who reach adulthood and pass on their genes to later generations. Infanticide is one fascinating, though disturbing, example. Many societies have killed a large fraction of their infants, even in 19th century Europe. In light of the enormous cost of raising a child to adulthood, it makes evolutionary sense to abandon the babies that the parents can't afford. Hrdy examines when parents choose to raise their children. For example, in colonial India the higher castes raised more sons while the lower castes raised more daughters, in each case supporting the gender with greater reproductive potential.

Hrdy spends most of her time on the early stages of motherhood: mate selection, infanticide, breastfeeding, and attachment between mother and infant. While those are all important topics, a balanced treatment of post-weaning motherhood would have been more interesting. Maybe later childhood is less relevant to a primatologist.

Still, she does reveal many aspects of motherhood that I hadn't seen before. She argues that sociobiology is compatible with feminism, once you counter the 'women as passive breeders' thread of Darwinian thought. Also, infant abandonment and preferential treatment of some children indicate that unconditional caring is not a universal maternal instinct. She describes how, in Europe of past centuries, many parents left their children at foundling homes with appallingly high mortality rates. Even now, many cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are actually infanticides. She emphasizes the importance of allomothers - caregivers besides the actual mother - in raising a child. She suggests that infants have evolved to be adorable and to compel their mother's attention, in order to increase their likelihood of survival.

The book lists many tidbits about mothering among various animal species. After a ewe gives birth, it licks the amniotic fluid off of its lamb so it can recognize the smell in the future; sheep evidently look alike to other sheep. Dogs, prairie dogs, and hamsters prune their litters, feeding the stronger ones with higher survival chances while nudging away the runts. Male langur monkeys often kill unrelated infants and then mate with the now childless females.

Mother Nature could definitely use some editing. The book's length could have been cut in half without omitting anything important. Much of the time, Hrdy reiterates points that she made previously. Her arguments were convincing, though heavy-handed at times. The descriptions of animal behavior were more entertaining than the theoretical discussions. And the photographs of baby monkeys were cute.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about Mother Nature. The book included a great deal of significant material with many explicit examples. However, the writing style and organization left room for improvement.