Word: infantalizes
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...their relatives' young. Alloparents are not unconditional caretakers; they won't devote scarce resources to other offspring at the expense of their own. But when conditions allow an alloparenting deal to be made, it's a good bargain all around, with adults protecting their genetic legacy and the infant getting a team of surrogate moms in return. "Babies can learn to be quite satisfied with any of a select group of caretakers," says Hrdy, whose book Mother Nature is the most notable and artful of a flock of new studies re-examining motherhood...
...what happens when this resource-management system breaks down? What if the mother gambles wrong and an offspring comes along when there are no resources to support it, or what if she is too young to care for it? What if the infant is sickly and seems likely to languish no matter how well it's looked after? Humans agonize over these situations, but mothers throughout the animal kingdom show a surprising willingness to abandon or even kill such luckless young rather than pour energy down a bottomless reproductive well...
...Indian village committed infanticide at least once. In India and China, selective infanticide of baby girls is still commonly, if quietly, practiced. And while there may be less of a history of such killing in the U.S., periodic cases of high-schoolers secretly giving birth and then murdering their infant are proof that such practices know no cultural boundaries...
...problem with such scientific forgiveness is that it may give human beings, with their much celebrated free will, too little credit. Most mothers will love and nurture even an unwanted infant because, well, it seems the right thing to do. Most will stretch their resources to the breaking point in order to have a second child not because that's what their genes drive them to do but because they love having children. Critics of the work of Hrdy and others resist drawing too many parallels between human and animal parents, insisting that the few traits that distinguish us from...
...Harvard is a strange and wonderful place," Seltzer mused from her Carlisle home yesterday. For the past two months, she's been on maternity leave, caring for her infant daughter, Teagan...