S5 E6 - Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on ‘Rethinking our Starting Assumptions’

“I love your field. It is making such an important point about scientists who don't understand the extent to which our own upbringing impacts our starting assumptions. It's those starting assumptions that get you in trouble.”  

In today’s episode Samara Greenwood returns to interview the pioneering primatologist and evolutionary anthropologist, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, about her latest book Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies. The discussion centres on the shifts Sarah made in her personal assumptions through the process of conceiving and writing this work. The notion that men had the capacity to be expert carers of young babies was foreign to Sarah until she experienced it firsthand when her son-in-law took on the role of primary carer to her first-born grandson in 2012. This ‘lived experience’ of expert male care led Sarah not only to a new mindset, but to a new way of theorising about the evolutionary possibilities for baby-care in men. 

Relevant Links:  

• Sarah B. Hrdy | Anthropology 
• Father Time | Princeton University Press 
• Should We Expect More from Dads? | Featuring Sarah Hrdy | The New Yorker 
• How Feminism changed Primatology | Featuring Samara Greenwood | The Philosopher’s Zone 

For more on the topic of supporting men in their care of children, see our series on working fathers.  

Working Fathers Podcast Mini-Series:  

• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 1 - Where's Dad? 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 2 - What Gave Rise to the Breadwinner? 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 3 - Are Fathers Free? 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 4 - Give Dads a Break 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 5 - What's Next?
   

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This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

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Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org