Although the evolutionary origins of altruism have not yet been entirely elucidated, Daniel Batson believes that “they lie at least in part in the nurturant impulse of human parents to care for their young. This impulse has been strongly selected for within our evolutionary history; without it, our species would have vanished long ago. Perhaps because altruism based on nurturance is so thoroughly woven into the fabric of our lives, is so commonplace and so natural, its importance has failed to be recognized.”1 For Batson, among humans, it is more logical and empirically more easily verifiable to look for the genetic bases for altruism in a cognitive generalization of feelings of tenderness, empathic concern, and nurturance which have emerged from the parental instinct, which is deeply inscribed in our genes, than to attempt to prove that stems from Hamilton’s kin selection, Trivers’ reciprocal altruism, or a genetic tendency to socialization and formation of coalitions.2
The idea traces back to Darwin, for whom love of the other was based on parental and filial affection and linked to the emotion of sympathy.3 Species of mammals that did not concern themselves with the well-being of their offspring would quickly disappear.4 William McDougall, a social psychologist who was very influential in the early twentieth century, outlined a psychological approach based on Darwin’s natural selection in which he stressed parental instinct, the “emotions of tenderness” associated with it, and, by extension, the concern we feel for all vulnerable beings who need protection. McDougall developed the idea that parental care, which he regarded as the most powerful of all instincts, is the basis for altruism extended to non-related individuals.5
Several contemporary researchers, including Elliott Sober, Frans de Waal, Paul Ekman, and, as we have cited above, Daniel Batson, have taken up this hypothesis and argued that, frequently, a quality selected over the course of evolution will be called on later to fulfill a different function. Thus, the tendency to be kind to our children and those close to us would not only have played a major role in the preservation of our species, but would also be at the origin of extended altruism.6 As Paul Ekman notes:
Research has shown that when mothers hear their infants cry, there is a biological response, but not in females who have not yet been mothers. Mothers show a larger response to their own infants, but show response to others as well. Not only that, but when our parents grow old and become helpless, our concern, love, and care for them increase strongly, and they become like our children.7
Among animals, we also find surprising cases of altruistic adoption among different species, like the female dog in Buenos Aires that became famous for having saved an abandoned human baby by placing him among her pups. Similarly, in a striking documentary, we see a leopard chase and kill a mother baboon. Before dying, the baboon gives birth.8 At the sight of the newborn, the stunned leopard hesitates for a second, then changes its attitude: he treats the little baboon gently and, when other predators approach, takes him delicately in his jaws and places him safely on a tree branch. The baby baboon, frightened at first, tries to climb higher, is caught by the leopard, and then, exhausted, lies motionless between the paws of the leopard, which begins to lick and groom him. The two fall asleep leaning against each other. It’s finally the cold of night that takes the life of the baby baboon.
Human procreation is distinguished from that of the great apes in several ways. Until a period considered very recent from the viewpoint of evolution, women had children at frequent intervals, and these children, more vulnerable at birth, depended for a longer time on their mothers for survival. It is thought that among hunter-gatherers, women had an average of one child every four years. A female chimpanzee has a baby only every six years, an orangutan every eight years. A young chimpanzee is almost entirely autonomous by the age of six; it takes years for a human child to develop its independence. The combination of these two factors—more frequent procreation and a longer period of dependence in offspring—implies that human mothers have more need of help to raise their children. The appearance among hominids of parental care in which many individuals take part could go back to as far as 1.8 million years ago.9
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy devoted her career to studying this question, and the sum of her own studies and those of a number of other anthropologists and ethologists led her to formulate this theory:
I hypothesize that novel rearing conditions among a line of early hominids meant that youngsters grew up depending on a wider range of caretakers than just their mothers, and this dependence produced selection pressure that favored individuals who were better at decoding the mental states of others, and figuring out who would help and who would hurt.10
In other words, the fact that newborns interact quickly with a large number of people may have contributed considerably to raising the degree of cooperation and empathy among humans. Aside from affective empathy, adds Michael Tomasello, psychologist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, one of the main capacities acquired by humans more than animals is to feel more concerned about what others think, and to factor that constantly into their own behavior.
Among the Hadza in Africa, a newborn is handled by eighteen people in the first twenty-four hours of its birth.11 It has been demonstrated that “alloparents” (secondary parents) play a crucial role in the child’s cognitive development, including empathy and autonomy. During its first year, the mother remains the main person taking care of the child, but the child is very often looked after by grandmothers, great-aunts, brothers and sisters, fathers, and even visitors. Breastfeeding by other women besides the mother was practiced in 87% of hunter-gatherers, and still to this day in a number of rural societies, as I have observed in Tibet and Nepal.12
During the first months after birth, a mother chimpanzee lets hardly anyone touch her child, except, according to Jane Goodall, for elder siblings whom she sometimes allows to groom her small infant. By four months, small chimps play gently with siblings and others.13
This situation has consequences for social communications and for the development of empathy: a young chimpanzee has a relationship almost entirely with its mother, and, what’s more, it doesn’t have to worry about her eventual absence or to check if she is nearby, since it is constantly carried by her. In contrast, a human newborn is in visual, auditory, and emotional contact (via facial expressions it recognizes and can copy from birth) not only with its mother, but also with its father and a large number of other people who all speak to it, gesture at it, exchange looks with it, take it in their arms, etc.
A study carried out between 1950 and 1980 by the United Kingdom Medical Research Council followed the growth rate of children in Mandinka horticulturist tribes in Gambia. Out of over 2,000 children, almost 40% of those raised solely by their two parents died before the age of five. But for a child whose siblings—sisters, especially—and maternal grandmother lived in the immediate neighborhood, the probability of dying before the age of five fell from 40% to 20%.14 In particular, the proximity of a grandmother from birth influences strongly the child’s state of health and cognitive abilities three years later.15 For Hrdy, without the help of “alloparents,” there would never have been a human species. The notion of “family” as limited to a couple and their children developed only in the twentieth century in Europe, and as late as the 1950s in the United States.16 Before that, most families included members of three generations, often comprising uncles and aunts, cousins, etc.
In the 1930s, especially in the United States, mothers followed the theories of Dr. John Watson—as famous as they were harmful—who recommended they take their newborns in their arms as little as possible and let them cry as long as they liked, in order to make them strong and independent. Mothers, he said, should be ashamed of the “mawkish, sentimental” way they have been handling their offspring.17 Studies of Romanian and Chinese orphans, however, have testified to the catastrophic effects of privation of physical contact and emotional interactions on the physiological and intellectual development of young children.
Among the great apes, the young sometimes play with adult males, but a male gorilla, for example, never carries or takes care of an infant. There are, however, a few exceptions to this rule in other primates; among titi monkeys, for instance, the father is constantly on duty, taking care of the baby. The mother takes her child only to feed it and sleep with it. Baby titis spend most of their time on the backs of their fathers, and show more sadness when they’re separated from him than from their mother.18 There are also cases of male chimpanzees adopting a young orphan, carrying it on their backs, and taking good care of it.19
In general, human fathers concern themselves much less with their offspring than mothers, but there are exceptions. Among the Aka in Africa, for example, fathers look after newborns at least half the time, by day and by night. Today, in Bangladesh, in the Bedia community, or among water-dwelling gypsies living in the delta of the Sunderbans, it’s mainly the fathers who stay on the boat and look after the children during the day, while the women travel the countryside to sell trinkets.20 On average, fathers in hunter-gatherer societies spend much more time with their children than fathers in modern Western societies.21
Specialists in evolution know that suppressing a selection factor can lead to swift evolutionary consequences. Sarah Hrdy foresees a possible atrophy of empathy, if children no longer benefit from the rich interactions associated with collaborative care. From her point of view, if empathy and the faculties of understanding others developed thanks to particular ways of taking care of children, and if an increasing proportion of humans no longer benefited from these conditions, compassion and the search for emotional connections would disappear. She questions whether such people “will be human in ways that we now think of as distinguishing our species—that is, empathic and curious about the emotions of others, shaped by our ancient heritage of communal care.”22
One of the challenges, and sometimes tragedies, for women today is that they often have to cope alone with a task that the evolution of hominids had made communal, and for which a plethora of well-meaning people had provided in traditional societies. Daycare centers can offer a substitute to traditional communal rearing, with studies showing that good-quality daycare centers had a very positive effect on the development of children’s cognitive and emotional faculties.23 While some people recommend that women become less maternal,24 what we should do, according to Sarah Hrdy, is revive the parental instinct among all members of society so as to foster our tendency to care for each other.