Human Birth: An Evolutionary Perspective
“Trevathan carefully details the extraordinary series of challenges that mothers and their infants face during the nine months of pregnancy, the critical and arduous hours of labor and delivery, and the long period during which the infant develops into an independent individual… The special strength of this book is that Trevathan not only describes the human birth process, but also speculates about the evolutionary mechanisms that have shaped these complex adaptations over time.”—Joan B. Silk,American Scientist“Trevathan weaves together diverse information ranging from physiochemical constraints on reproductive physiology to cross-cultural studies of contemporary maternal behavior, constructing a coherent image of the perinatal period throughout hominid history… The breadth of information on primate reproductive biology brought to bear in this book is impressive and should make the volume interesting to scientists from many disciplines.”—Debra S. Judge,The Quarterly Review of Biology“Human Birthis a highly readable and scholarly integrative overview of anthropological understandings of human birth… Trevathan has not only written a state-of-the-science book on human birth and mother-infant bonding from an anthropological perspective, but she has also provided an integrated, biosocial perspective of the evolutionary history of human birth and its meaning in today’s world.”—Jane B. Lancaster,American Anthropologist“Human Birthis an eminently sensible book. I mean this as high praise. It is not easy to be sensible about a process that is so strongly both biological and cultural… This book is a scholarly study which combines primate background, fossil evidence, and ethological observations of human behavior. It is a welcome contribution to anthropological literature, written for an audience of specialists. However, the implications of the work are broader, and apply to medical practice and the approaches of mothers to childbirth.”—Alison Jolly,Medical Anthropology Quarterly“This book is concerned with birthing, bonding, and the role of both within an evolutionary context… [I]n an age when one in four births is cesarean delivery, whenin vitrofertilization, transferred and frozen embryos, surrogate tugs-of-war, prenatal fetal therapy, and other technological but sometimes dubious marvels continue to be advanced, a book that is not an analysis of the moral and ethical implications of biotechnology, but has as its theme noninterventionist birth, is a novelty and worth reading.”—Ethel Sloane,Gender and Society“The book is interestingly written… [T]he author has struck out boldly to provide an accounting of the putative role of birth and human evolution and provides several hypotheses for future research to address.”—Doris R. Entwisle,Journal of Marriage and Family