NYT gift article (expires in 30 days)
I find myself of two minds on this.
The theory seems almost bizarre on its face – if smarter parents with big-brained babies were less likely to survive reproduction, natural selection would automatically select for smaller heads. Because, you know, the mothers of big-brained babies would die during childbirth more frequently, which (by definition) means reduced fitness for reproduction. It then comes down to whether small headedness or adult intelligence is the larger predictor of successful adult reproduction, I guess.
It’s always a bit of a “just so” story to try and reason out the precise mechanisms of long term statistical natural selection that is influenced by MANY factors, but this one seems a bit more ridiculous than most.
But also, “the obstetrical dilemma leads to a widespread notion of the female body as inescapably defective”… seems like a silly takeaway. There may be ample scientific problems with the obstetrical dilemma, but worrying about the message it sends is a moral position, not a scientific one. Acknowledging that certain activities – such as pregnancy and birth – carry statistical medical risk is not an accusation that anyone is “inescapably defective”. That’s an extremist, normative interpretation of the medical facts.
If a doctor tells somebody, “you have a medical condition that is statistically likely to increase risk of X”, that’s NOT telling somebody that they are “defective”. There is no active creator who “made” a person, there was no decision made to produce an inferior product, there is no fumble-fingered worker who screwed up. The recombinative genetic lottery is what it is, and a plain statement of the facts is not a value judgement.
I think you’ve hit upon what medical anthropology needs to sort out as a discipline. To be specific: What constitutes a moral position versus a phenomenological observation about a cultural phenomenon that assigns meaning to biology and anatomy? It is quite an interesting problem you have highlighted. This does not, in my opinion, question medical anthropology as a valid scientific field of study. It’s something to think about, research, and talk about to improve the field, which is a fascinating field, indeed, and totally worthwhile.
I see the same kind of flawed thinking in modern health advice.
Doctors: Eating too much is putting you at statistical risk for conditions X, Y, and Z.
Patients: It’s normal to want to eat!
Doctors: We didn’t say it wasn’t normal, we said it will hurt many of you.
Patients: Having X, Y, or Z doesn’t make us bad people!
Doctors: We didn’t say you’re bad, we said eating too much is bad.
Patients: You shouldn’t use normative good/bad judgements to describe health risks!
Doctors: We didn’t do that, now lose some weight you dinks or yer gonna die!
… etc. ad infinitum.
Or, take the dialog around sexual assault, or abortion, or… almost any human activity. The human tendency to take objective fact (as much as anything can be considered objective) and convert it to subjective value judgements underlies, and undermines, everything.
Yes, this is classic anthropological theorizing, in fact. Claude Levi-Strauss touched upon these issues, and they continue to be interesting questions to think about. He didn’t frame it in the medical field, but it’s the same question that plagues sociological and anthropological research. Your elaboration actually highlights something very important: the straight-up medical field could learn from medical anthropology and seems to pay little attention to it. The two fields have so much to talk about together and collaborate. It happens sometimes, but not often enough.
I’m not sure if brain size directly correlates with intelligence. We also have pretty limited methods of describing and measuring intelligence, intra as well as inter-species.
Fair point, I was taking that at face value merely because that was the argument that was made. I don’t know if that’s true or not.
Nice to see some other opinions on this topic, having this old story by an old man prof in the 60s being criticised is good. Seems like evolutionary anthropology has been plagued by a bit of old school sexism
Sexism is when a scientific theory is challenged.
Absolute American take on the situation.
A bit off the mark there, I did not mean that sexism is when a theory is challenged, and neither am I American. I was referring to the fact that most of these evolutionary anthropology dogmas were established a long time ago by men, when science had basically no participation by women (That’s the sexist bit). So now when our slightly more balanced scientists look at these old dogmas they can start to challenge it. In those times saying that women don’t run as efficiently because of wider hips would probably not have raised any discussion (Because there were no women). Now women can rightly challenge it and look for data to support the claim, which seems to be lacking, and in fact it supports the null hypothesis that it does not affect efficiency of running.
I also don’t mean it has to be women to challenge that idea, but it makes sense to me that they would be more likely to.
It sounds like there’s a lot of yet-unanswered questions here. If it is the size of the whole infant, why are our babies so big? If it’s not walking, could it be running? It does seem like human biomechanics requires a somewhat narrow hip bone, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen statistical evidence that narrowness of the pelvis is tightly balanced against birth mortality in humans.
Wow, very interesting!
I’ve always taken this now 60 year old theory as fact and I’m glad that scientist is taking another go at it.
Babie’s heads are already all mush when they exist the birth canal, and the fact that twins exist the oven way sooner than singletons points to a mechanism that triggers birthing once the baby matter exceeds some critical metabolic thresthold.
Still think that pregnancy is a barbaric practice, and we should develop artificial wombs as soon as possible.
