to ponder that evolutionary women may well were chosen to look after their off spring

[FairLadyRantALot]

in the way they do....i.e. often more close and full on parent.....
just thinking this of other debates, not just on mn, so, not a thread about a thread.....because men can have baby's whatever age, and are meant to die younger than women, but women have a biological cut off date....?
personally I do believe we all have the same human rights, but that we are generally wired differently depending on many things, such as race, sex....but I do think that women are evolutionary and biologically more geared up to parenting, as in remembering everything, to some extent

True juule - we don't know yet if it was active selection or 'tagged on'.

Yes - feeding other babies could be adaptive if you live in groups that tend to be related - that is kin selection. There is indeed a view that human intelligence may be primarily driven by selection for soical interaction and this may either drive or have been driven by (cause and effect problem as usual) by alloparenting.

It would certainly help to explain why so many modern women struggle with the experience of motherhood when they are too much alone. I just went to a talk of Hrdy's where she quoted from studies on foraging peoples e.g. babies are held by alloparents (i.e. not their mother) up to 85% of the time! What a different experience that is from many of the mums on this bb.

snorbs - I read an interesting [http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_634064.html article] that suggests the Y-chromosome may soon be dying out and apparently it has gradually lost most of the genes it once carried anyway.

However, before anyone gets too carried away it will not happen any time soon and even if it did the researchers at Penn State think:

"If the Y chromosome disappeared, Makova said it wouldn't mean the end of men. Instead, a set of chromosomes might evolve to fill its role. Or, males could become simply 'X' with no 'Y.' Another option: gender could be determined by outside factors, such as a change in temperature."

Gaaarrgh link again:

article

acinonyx I think there is a lot in what you say about isolation impacting new mothers terribly.

We have in our society to a large extent replaced geographical social groupings with work - it's where we spend most of our time and where we have a lot of our close relationships.

So when the woman has to leave the workplace and finds herself at home alone with a small baby it can be a very difficult adjustment. Certainly having no-one around to pass the baby to when things get hard is very hard going.