Father Time
Book description
A sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies
It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things. Hasn't it always been so? When evolutionary science came along, it rubber-stamped this venerable division of…
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Why read it?
2 authors picked Father Time as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Sarah Hrdy is a biological anthropologist best known for her discovery that male monkeys sometimes promote their own reproductive success by killing infants sired by rival predecessors, and for her subsequent scholarly syntheses of knowledge about the care and protection of young children by mothers and "others" which mainly means their grandmothers and other female kin.
As a result of witnessing caring young fathers in her own family, Hrdy now says she's experienced a sort of epiphany. She was formerly convinced that people, like many other mammals, had been equipped by evolution with profound sex differences in parental motives and…
As a science writer, I am excited when I read groundbreaking books. Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies does just that. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it breaks new ground in our understanding of fathering. From her background as a primatologist, evolutionary anthropologist, mother, and grandmother, author Sarah Blaffer Hrdy presents a new perspective on men’s nurturing capacity that changes the traditional view of females as the exclusive nurturers of babies and men as hunter/protectors removed from the day to day duties caring for a baby. She also takes readers on her personal journey of discovery from…