This is not the story of maternity in which Madonna and child gaze at each other in eternal rapture, but one in which the struggle to survive forces a mother to make hard choices. She notes that infanticide can be evolutionarily adaptive if an infant seems unlikely to thrive or has the misfortune to be of an unwanted sex. Indeed, the majority of human cultures postpone formal acceptance of a child, such as a naming ceremony, until a commitment has been made to rear it. It is impossible to know when these rites of passage first emerged, but Hrdy supposes that they were already in place by the Neolithic period. By casting the rituals in stone the author confers ancient authority on her conviction that nurturing is not an inevitable consequence of parturition.
Further support is gleaned from accounts of child abandonment in historical times.
Desertion may seem less drastic than infanticide, but it is often just as deadly. In 18th-century Europe, wealthy and enlightened benefactors built ''foundling homes'' as sanctuaries for abandoned children. One, London's Foundling Hospital, was famously supported by Handel through Easter performances of ''Messiah.'' Unsanitary conditions and a shortage of wet nurses contributed to the death of many unfortunate inhabitants of these institutions. Hrdy notes that in 1767, mortality rates in the Russian foundling homes of Catherine II reached 99 percent. The parental decision to abandon or nurture may take account of prospects for other children but, as Trivers's theory of parent-offspring conflict recognizes, a baby has only one ticket in the lottery of life.