Parenting: Primate Psychology VI

This chapter contains some evidence that I tend to recoil from, I must be honest, but in the psychotherapeutic fashion I must hold this in awareness to maintain objectivity insofar as that is possible.

In repeating the information that parenting styles are stable longitudinally the author comments that this may be due to early experience or to genetic and physiological factors; it may seem that I am denying the latter, but I am merely concentrating on that aspect which can be influenced. A therapist can do nothing about the clients' genes. In going on to consider the existence of parental abuse of infants among primates, when "normally reared mothers" are seen to physically abuse their offspring, the author suggests that pathological variation in genetic, physiological, and neurobiological systems is probably responsible. This takes me back to a point I have already made: the complexity of even a monkey's psyche and difficulty of recognising what may render the "normal" abnormal. My rearing looked perfectly normal, and indeed materially above average, and so did that of most of my clients, even those who were being sexually abused in their own home. In terms of a vervet monkey in an experimental colony, is the observation close and continuous enough to spot the minor events which might have a major effect on the infant tangentially involved? This is merely to highlight the extreme difficulty of separating out the genetic and physiological from the experiential.

(Mon 15th May). The areas where I felt that strong internal resistance noted above, were issues of teenage mothers, and the care of sick babies. The point being made was that primate teenagers were more likely to be inadequate mothers than fully mature females, and the long-term outcomes for their surviving infants were more negative, and that this was an evolved solution to enhance inclusive fitness. The issue of it being a "spandrel", an inevitable consequence of other factors, did not seem to have been taken into account. I have read an account, for example, of a young ewe walking away from her newborn lamb as if it did not exist, but with effort on the part of her owner quickly learnt to become a good "mother" to it. The appropriate psychological and other mechanisms had not yet "come on line" but were quickly activated. I suggest that many teenage primate mothers may be demonstrating the same effect. It is of concern because of the conclusions being drawn about human teenage mothers, which allowed the effects of culture to be downgraded. Certainly in the 11 or 12-year-old human female is not mature enough for motherhood but if that nubile-at-11-years-old female had become pregnant at 14 or 15 she might well have been ready for motherhood physiologically and psychologically and only culturally handicapped. If she becomes an inadequate mother it lets us off the hook to lay the blame on evolution, and on her of course for following a natural impulse much hyped up around her for commercial reasons. The point I'm making again is that there are powerful, unrecognised, self-interested motives from the hominin psyche influencing this type of research, which cuts so close to the bone.

The research into the neglect of pre-mature and sickly babies relative to healthy ones, like research into the risk of harm from step parents relative to natural parents, is subject to the same criticism. It is all statistical and dealing with small margins; if the margins were indisputable they would be having an effect that would be known in society without research. Women would know for example that they were risking their child if they married again. Having myself vicariously witnessed through a client the devotion given to a child with no prospect of long-term survival, I am not impressed with statistics that take no account of the alternative realities. Once again I think people looking for evolutionary effects find them by simplifying out the huge complexities of the cultural primate. I gave one instance in my writings (chapter 9) of the mother persuaded to allow her baby to be buried alive because it was born without hair, a negative factor for her tribe; her new mate, not the father, did not want it. I don't believe anyone has investigated the pressures on mothers of premature and sickly babies in our culture, nor of course the psychological history of the mothers of the babies studied in the research mentioned in this chapter. I have already set out my thoughts on statistics in my Update on Adapting Minds, in which book the findings on step parents were challenged. Have any statistics been compiled relating harm done to children by paid carers comparatively with step and natural parents? Or does that hit on other people's resistance to challenging a modern lifestyle?

. I heard on the radio of an Indian community ravaged by the effects of uranium mining in the vicinity and the loving care given to the severely damaged children that were the consequence of radiation. It was needless to say a poor community, but according to this chapter perhaps evolutionarily more, or do I mean less, advanced! (This was completed two or three weeks ago, at the least the thinking is complete as I could make it, I'm too into symbols I must post this, 3rd June)