On the evolutionary dynamics of social injustice

I've got to blog about this book I read, that isn't even out yet, because it's awesome, and because y'all need to look out for it and go buy it when it's published:

The evolution of inequity by Cailin O 'Connor

What not to read just before you need to sleep

I've totally freaked myself out reading 'Three shoes, one sock and no hairbrush: Everything you need to know about having your second child'. The author, Rebecca Abrams pulls no punches in warning second-time expectant mothers that they're in for some shocks. One 'myth' she busts is the one that says parents worry about whether they'll love their second child as much as their first, and then of course they do. Not so, Abrams warns, or at least not necessarily, and not at first.

On the eco-evo-devo of cooperation

To explain the origin of any transition, it is necessary to identify some phenotypic change that brings about a new fitness benefit.

How Eskimos keep their babies warm

Parenting wisdom from around the world.
By Mei-Ling Hopgood, Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2013

Argentinians let their children stay up late. French parents apparently inculcate a wholesome attitude towards food. Kenyans don't bother with prams.

How not to f*** them up

By Oliver James, Vermillion, 2010

Oliver James, a clinical child psychologist of unashamedly psychoanalytic bent, categorises mothering styles into three types, and offers advice on how to make the best job of mothering within the constraints created by each style. There is the Hugger - who is most generous and loving towards her baby, the Organiser - who prefers older children and finds the early years a challenge, and the Flexi - who chops and changes between both. In a nutshell, the best way not to f*** them up is to be a Hugger, and if you're too damn selfish to manage that, then make sure you get a top of the range nanny!

You might guess that I wasn't the most sympathetic audience. I'm disappointed by this, since I like James' Guardian column (no wait, that's Oliver Burkeman!), and I'm generally a right sucker for self-help psychobabble.

The Philosophical Baby

by Alison Gopnik

Gopnik makes the interesting argument that the ability to carry out counterfactual reasoning - i.e. thinking about things that are false or counter-to-fact - is *the* distinctively human capacity, which has underpinned our huge success as a species, by enabling us to make plans and come up with ways in which we can modify our world. By thinking about ways the world could be different, we can anticipate the future and formulate ways to modify that future, by constructing tools and so on.

Furthermore, contrary to older theories in which children were viewed as basically stupid adults (Piaget), Gopnik argues that when it comes to this most important cognitive capacity - counterfactual reasoning - children and even babies are out in front. This is best demonstrated, she argues, in their vast capacity for imaginative play. Adults, in comparison, are severely limited beings, with far fewer neuronal connections as a consequence of all the pruning that goes on in adolescence, and are therefore much less able to think outside the box.

Rather than viewing children as adults in the making, Gopnik argues that adults basically exist in order to enable the existence of children and babies who, though very vulnerable and dependent in terms of basic needs, are essentially the 'R and R' department of humanity, without which we would be stuck eking out an existence by trial and error learning like our chimpanzee kin. Without childhood, she claims, we would have no cultural advances, no ability to radically construct the world we live in according to our needs.

Children literally make the future : )