Parenting for Primates

Harriet J. Smith (2005)

Harvard University Press

ISBN 0674019385 (hardback) £18.95 / $29.95

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Popular scientific books can fall uncomfortably between two stools – too much science, often inaccurate, or extreme speculation and interpretation to attract the popular (money-making) market. Fortunately this book does neither, but I’m not quite clear what the book aims to do for the reader. Harriet Smith is both an expert in primate social development and an experienced clinical psychologist working with family problems. The science of primate development is excellent and lucidly presented, as might be expected given her background, and she has covered almost every topic. She starts with the realisation that non-human primates aren’t instinctive parents; they fumble, reject, bite and drop infants. In the absence of experience, they are abusive and incompetent. So far, so human? Human and non-human primates have similar learning needs in relation to handling and responding to their infants. Their biology of lactation and natural weaning are almost identical, and the social dimensions of mothering, fathering, parenting and development are extremely diverse among the primate group as a whole.

Chapters cover maternal styles and responsiveness, paternal presence (or absence), a very brief review of alloparenting which is developed further in relation to group parenting contexts and single parenting, two chapters on the process of development – weaning and independence – and a chapter on child abuse. It concludes with a very brief summary of how much parents matter to ensuring survival and self esteem. All these topics are handled with skill and knowledge, well supported with references to the recent major primate literature. There are also reasoned discussions of the anthropological literature, but these are of less depth than either the clinical or the primatological perspectives.

The only problem with this book, as I see it, is that primatologists working with development have probably read almost all the literature digested and presented here, and many are wary of adding value to primate observations by direct analogy to humans. During human evolution, the ‘primate template’ has been modified by brain expansion, extended development, enhanced longevity, cooking and weaning foods (not to mention milk from domestic species), and above all the facility for leaning associated with language, self and other, and technology. While primate parenting does provide the “Mother Nature” perspective so beautifully documented by Sarah Hrdy, clinical problems within families may arise from those deviations from the primate template that are responses to specifically modern human adaptations. Harriet Smith makes an interesting and useful case for using primate parenting to understand some of what goes wrong in families, and she is generally cautious in her interpretations. But the value of the book is less in its primatology, excellent as that is, and more in getting humans, including other clinicians, to appreciate the vary array of parenting styles available to primates as a group.

Phyllis C. Lee

Behaviour and Evolution Research Group, University of Stirling