I am having fun thinking about our physical and psychological origins and experience from birth until adulthood. I mentioned yesterday Melvin Konner and his book "The Tangled Wing." I found that he has written "The Evolution of Childhood". He is an MD and a professor of anthropology so his focus is both on biological facts and constraints, and also on what cultures do with them. He also wrote "Women After All"(2015), which seems to be a modern extension of "The Natural Superiority of Women"(1952) by Ashely Montagu. Both go well with "The Better Half" by Sharon Moalem, an American male scientist, about the genetic differences between human females and males and the advantages of having two X chromosomes as women do, but men don't.
There are several books on the evolution of the experience and meaning of childhood. I am conscious of the recent increase in human longevity. Living longer means that a smaller portion of our lives is spent being pre-mature. I have read that girls are reaching menarche earlier and that 8 and 9 year olds sometimes begin menstruating although the average American girl has her first period at age 12. I just read that girls can have babies about a year after their first period. I am confident that every woman would advise young women to wait at least until their 20's before having children.
Konner writes in "Women After All":
women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future. It is not just a matter of culture or upbringing, although both play their roles. It is a matter of biology and of the domains of our thoughts and feelings influenced by biology. It is because of chromosomes, genes, hormones, and nerve circuits. It is not mainly because of what your mother taught you or how experience shaped you. It is mainly because of intrinsic differences in the body and the brain. Do these differences account for all the ways women and men differ? No. Are all men one way and all women another? Also no. Are the differences I will be talking about affected by experience? Up to a point, yes. But none of these considerations, or many others I will take into account, seriously impedes my argument or deflects its key conclusion: women are superior in most ways that matter now. And no, I do not mean what was meant by patronizing men who said this in the benighted past—that women are lofty, spiritual creatures who must be left out of the bustle and fray of competitive life, of business, politics, and war, in order to raise the next generation of people with values. I mean something like the opposite of that. I mean that women are fundamentally pragmatic as well as caring, cooperative as well as competitive, skilled in getting their own egos out of the way, deft in managing people without putting them on the defensive, builders rather than destroyers. Above all, I mean that women can carry on the business of a complex world in ways that are more focused, efficient, deliberate, and constructive than men's, because women are not frequently distracted by impulses and moods that, sometimes indirectly, lead to inappropriate sex and unnecessary violence. Women are more reluctant participants in both. And if they do have to be drawn into wars, these will be wars of necessity, not wars of choice, founded on rational considerations, not on a clash of egos escalating out of control.
Konner, Melvin. Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy (p. 3-4). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
