Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies

Hrdy (The Woman That Never Evolved), an anthropology professor emerita at the University of California Davis, provides an outstanding examination of the history and science of fatherhood. For insight into the evolution of human paternity, Hrdy studies primate fathers, noting that while male chimpanzees brutally murder any baby they didn’t sire, owl monkeys will nurture other males’ infants as if they were their own. Crediting the evolutionary success of early humans to their communal social arrangements, Hrdy cites studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer groups that indicate prehistorical men, though able to take down big game, remained dependent on caloric plants gathered by women. Mutually beneficial gender roles emerged in which men provided protein for the community’s children in exchange for access to foraged tubers and nuts. Tracing the development of fatherhood through the modern era, Hrdy contends that the rise of agriculture and livestock privileged the status of aggressive men who defended their property, producing patriarchal societies that only in the past several decades have started trending toward more equitable divisions of child-rearing. Revelatory scientific studies shedding light on men’s biological proclivity for caring (close association with a newborn has been found to produce in men the same elevated levels of oxytocin seen in women) complement the edifying history. It amounts to an invaluable deep history of dads. (May)