{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The nature of nurture","description":"The idea of a "maternal instinct"\u2014the notion that mothers are wired for nurturing and care\u2014is a familiar one in our culture. And it has a flipside, a corollary\u2014what you might call \u201cpaternal aloofness.\u201d It's the idea that men just aren't meant to care for babies, that we have more, you know, manly things to do. But when you actually look at the biology of caretaking, the truth is more complicated and much more interesting. My guest today is Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis and the author of the new book,  Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies. In it, she examines paternal care, the biology that supports it, and the norms and practices that sometimes suppress it. In this conversation, Sarah and I set her new book, Father Time, in the context of her four previous books. We discuss the surprising prevalence of male care in fish and amphibians. We talk about how Charles Darwin noted the plasticity of caretaking in animals, only to ignore that plasticity when talking about humans. We consider how time in intimate proximity with babies activates capacities for nurturing\u2014not just in fathers, but in caretakers of all kinds. Along the way, we touch on langurs and owl monkeys; emus and cassowaries; cichlid fish and fairy shrimp; prolactin and oxytocin; patriarchy and patriarchal notions. We talk about what seems to be distinctive about the human capacity for care; and about what happens when males spend too much time competing for status, and not enough time snuggling babies. You'll probably get a sense for this from our conversation, but there are very few researchers who take both biology and culture as seriously as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy does. She does not shy away from digging deep into either domain. And she does not shy away from trying to trace the tangled links between the two. Alright friends, I hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.   A transcript of this episode is available here.   Notes and links 3:00 \u2013 A classic paper on male parental care in fishes.   7:00 \u2013 Dr. Hrdy\u2019s previous books include The Langurs of Abu, The Woman that Never Evolved, Mother Nature, and Mothers and Others. 13:00 \u2013 A academic article  on \u201ccooperative breeding\u201d in birds. 16:30 \u2013 The full text of Charles Darwin\u2019s book, The Descent of Man. 21:00 \u2013 Read about Caroline Kennard and her correspondence with Darwin here. 23:30 \u2013 A review of a recent book on Nancy Hopkins and her (quantitative) efforts to expose sexism at MIT. 26:00 \u2013 The 2014 paper on the brains of fathers in different caretaking roles. 37:00 \u2013 A paper by Larry Young and a colleague on the role of ancient peptides (like oxytocin) in sociality. 40:00 \u2013 The lab of Dr. Lauren O\u2019Connell, who studies physiology and social behavior in poison dart frogs. 42:00 \u2013 A review of paternal care in primates. 47:00 \u2013 For more on Michael Tomasello\u2019s \u201cmutualism hypothesis\u201d\u2014and a lot else\u2014see our earlier episode with Dr. Tomasello. 49:00 \u2013 For more on the costliness of the human brain, see our earlier episodes here and here. 58:00 \u2013 The 2007 study by Esther Herrmann, Michael Tomasello, and colleagues on the human specialization for social cognition. 59:00 \u2013 A study of children\u2019s early \u201costensive gestures\u201d of showing and offering. 1:02:00 \u2013 An obituary for the ethnographer Lorna Marshall. 1:09:00 \u2013 An overview of ostracods and the traces they leave in the fossil record.   Recommendations The Parental Brain, Michael Numan Silas Marner, George Eliot Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin Brave Genius, Sean Carroll   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.    For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social). ","author_name":"Many Minds","author_url":"https:\/\/disi.org\/manyminds\/","html":"