It takes a village: What chimpanzees can teach us about parenting
Anthropologist discovers male chimps share parenting duties with females — and the species benefits
Primatology research has long suggested that female chimpanzees are inherently overprotective of their infants, even to the point of aggression. But an evolutionary anthropologist made a remarkable finding that counters this stereotype.
For eleven months, Iulia Badescu camped out in a Ugandan jungle studying baby chimpanzees and their parents and expected to see negative interactions between mothers and other chimps.
"I was prepared to see females being less permissive of each other, kind of hiding their babies away from everybody," the University of Toronto PhD candidate told IDEAS.
"So I was surprised when I showed up and saw that 'Oh, there's actually a lot of shared infant care behaviours and a lot of permissiveness with infants."
Although chimpanzees have been studied for decades, there's not much recorded on what baby chimps do all day.
There's even less research on female chimpanzee behaviour. It seems that male chimps tend to be the centre of primatologists' attention, just as they are in their own communities, Badescu explained.
It takes a village
Kibale National Park in Ngogo, Uganda has the largest chimpanzee population studied in the world. There are over 200 chimpanzees, including 50 mothers and their infants that Iulia Badescu consistently observed during her time in the jungle.
Every day, Badescu witnessed chimps sharing infant care or what scientists refer to as "aloe parenting" — in layman's terms: babysitting.
Badescu would watch older brothers and sisters groom the infant and carry it around, sometimes up to an hour. But it was the adult male chimpanzees, generally considered to be a potential threat, that caught Badescu's interest.
"I've even seen adult males carry infants on their backs. Other researchers have kind of said that it's pretty rare. And so I was pretty surprised to see that ... it seems to be happening enough for me to actually study it and collect data," she said.
"Infants have a lot of leeway when it comes to even interacting with adult males. Infants can climb on them and pull their ears and pinch them, and the males will think it's really cute and they'll play with the infants."
According to Badescu's research, this collective care-giving from babysitters can contribute to a young chimpanzee's survival and success. Mother chimps are able to wean their young earlier, making them nutritionally independent and allowing more time for the female to reproduce faster.
From an evolutionary perspective it's a win-win for the species.
Natural parenting
While Badescu doesn't have kids, she acknowledges the pressure that mothers are under to be the "right kind of mother."
Her observations have led her to see firsthand — in both chimp and human societies — that there's a whole range of possibilities on how to raise a child.
So when it comes to the idea of "natural parenting" or any "natural" human behaviour, Badescu is skeptical.
"It implies that there is a specific way that we're supposed to be or behave, and it's wrapped up in a romanticized view of how we used to be back on the African savannah when we were just evolving, millions and millions of years ago and trying to be that way again," she explained.
"I don't think there is a 'natural' way to be. Science shows this, that we behave differently in different contexts. Primates in general are generalists."
Other guests in this episode:
- M.E. Picher, Child and Family Counselor completing her PhD in Developmental Psychology, with a focus on early learning at the U of Toronto. She is co-founder and director of Wholeplay She introduced us to new mothers Erin Gross, Susan Johnston, Laura Brown-Bowers and Lauren Auciello at Red Fish Blue Fish Creative Cafe in Toronto.
- Dario Maestripieri, professor of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. He's the author of numerous books on primate and human behaviour, including The Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships.
- Helen Longino, professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, best known for her work exploring the relationship between social values and scientific inquiry. One of her influential books is Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry.
** This episode is part of our series, Ideas in the Trenches, poduced by Nicola Luksic and Tom Howell.