If humans are wired for anything, Hrdy argues, it’s to trust and care for one another. Infants have evolved to instinctively scan the world for people they can count on, appeal to, and elicit care from—not just parents, but alloparents. It’s an impulse, Hrdy says, born of a long human history of what she calls “cooperative breeding.” In brain scans of adults looking at images of babies’ faces, neuroscientists have found that reward centers and brain regions associated with communication, attachment, and caregiving instantly activate. And not just in parents’ brains but also in the brains of
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