The anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has shown that the tradeoff between working and mothering was not invented by power-suited Yuppies of the 1980s. Women in foraging societies use a variety of arrangements to raise their children without starving in the process, including seeking status within the group (which improves the children’s well-being) and sharing childcare duties with other women in the band. Fathers, of course, are usually the main providers other than the mother herself, but they have bad habits like dying, deserting, and not making a living, and mothers have never depended on
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